Illumination – With wearing apparel or body support – Head covering or clamp
Patent
1999-06-17
2000-10-03
O'Shea, Sandra
Illumination
With wearing apparel or body support
Head covering or clamp
362103, 362223, 362285, 362287, 362427, F21V 21084
Patent
active
061262943
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable light irradiation device, which can be used to stimulate the eyes of user with light to regulate biological rhythm and improve awakening level of the user.
2. Disclosure of the Prior Art
As a medical treatment for wrong biological rhythm (or biological clock) or wrong sleeping-awakening rhythm of a subject, irradiating a high illumination light to the subject over a couple of hours has been well known in the past. This medical treatment is effective for a biological rhythm trouble with abnormal actions that is often observed on dementia patients, seasonal emotion trouble, endogenous depression, or a sleeping-awakening rhythm trouble. In addition, the medical treatment is effective for a fatigue caused by night work or jet lag at overseas travel.
In this optical medical treatment, the patient's or subject's eyes are stimulated with a high illumination light provided from an artificial light source at a time interval determined according to a degree of the wrong biological rhythm. When the condition of a patient is, for example, a slight seasonable emotion trouble or sleeping-awakening rhythm trouble, and the patient can normally spend daily life, it is preferred that the patient continues the optical medical treatment with use of a portable light irradiation device for irradiating the light to the patient's eyes, while spending the daily life.
For example, WO 89/08476 discloses a portable light irradiation device of this type. This device includes a headband adapted to be fitted on the head of user, a pair of supporting arms extending forwardly of the user from opposite ends of the headband, an illumination unit supported by the supporting arms and arranged in front of the eyes of the user, and a battery for supplying electric power to the illumination unit. By the way, in the normal optical medical treatment, it is required to irradiate the high illumination light to the patient over at least 30 minutes, and preferably about 2 hours. Therefore, to improve the effect of the optical medical treatment, it is important to suitably determine factors such as the setting position of the illumination unit to the user and the fitting state of the light irradiation device to the user's head with respect to the individual user. When these factors are not suitably set, the user may receive psychological unpleasant feeling or physically oppressive sensation during the optical medical treatment. Consequently, there is a problem that the effect of the optical medical treatment can not be sufficiently achieved.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a portable light irradiation device for improving the above problems. That is, this light irradiation device includes an illumination unit of an elongate shape for irradiating a light to the eyes of user, a pair of pads adapted to be fitted on both sides of the head of the user, a headband adapted to be fitted to a top of the user's head, which is coupled to the pads at opposite ends thereof, and a supporting arm extending from at least one of the pads to support the illumination unit at a forward end thereof so that the illumination unit can be disposed in front of the eyes of the user wearing the light irradiation device. The present invention is characterized in that the supporting arm is slidably supported to the pad at a rear end thereof such that a projection length of the supporting arm against the pad is adjustable. Thereby, it is possible to suitably determine a distance between the user eyes and the illumination unit, and also effectively provide an optical medical treatment without psychological unpleasant feeling or physically oppressive sensation caused to the user by unsuitable setting of the illumination unit.
It is preferred that the light irradiation device has a click mechanism for adjusting the projection length of the supporting arm against the pad in a stepwise manner. This click mechanism includes a click spri
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Koyama Emi
Matsubara Hozumi
Morita Suehiro
Nakano Toshio
Nishimura Hiroyuki
Alavi Ali
Matsushita Electric & Works Ltd.
O'shea Sandra
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