Blood really is thicker than water – yet makers of menstrual products have traditionally used saline to estimate how much liquid they can hold.
The capacity to absorb of traditional menstrual products is a common way to measure the amount of blood lost. Clinicians use it to diagnose heavy menstrual bleeding, which affects roughly a third of menstruating individuals worldwide (from 18.2% in China to 37.9% in Turkey) and could be a sign of more worrying ailments, such as fibroids.
But diagnosis is complicated when individuals use non-traditional products like discs and cups and when products’ advertised abilities are imprecise.
