Skin-care pouch

Details Skin-care pouch Skin-care pouch

2001-09-27

2002-11-05

Lankford, Jr., Leon B. (Department: 1651)

Drug, bio-affecting and body treating compositions

Preparations characterized by special physical form

Web, sheet or filament bases; compositions of bandages; or...

C424S400000, C424S401000, C424S486000, C424S125000, C424S699000, C424S700000, C424S701000, C424S715000, C424S725000, C424S750000, C428S034300, C428S034500, C428S035700

Reexamination Certificate

active

06475513

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Ivention
The present invention relates to a skin-care pouch which is supplied, for use, with water for applying a skin-care substance such as find powder of carbides or wood vinegar contained therein to the skin as the substance is oozed through a sealed pouch enclosure formed of a porous fabric.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, women have been highly concern about their cosmetic skin care for the face, hands, etc. A great variety of skin-care products have long been on the market to meet the demand.
In recent years, there has been a more universal growing concern about skin care regardless of sex or generations for the skin-health purpose in general such as treatment or relief of skin troubles such as pimps, hay fever, and atopic dermatitis. Met with this new market demand, the industries have introduced a variety of skin-care products.
Referring to face skin care products for example, these products are generally available in the form of skin lotion when they are designed for keeping skin moisture or in the form of milky lotion or cream when designed for supplementing oil to the face skin from which oil has been removed by washing with soap or water.
However, such conventional skin-care products have the problems of incompatibility to some users' skin and difficulty experienced by the user in the case of milky or cream when determining and applying a proper portion of the substance.
In view of the above, there remains a need for a skin care product which can overcome or at least reduce the above-described drawbacks of the prior art.
Under these circumstances described above, a discovery was made that when fine powder of carbides comprised mainly of “Bincho” charcoal or the like is dipped in water and then applied directly to the skin, effective components of the carbides will elute to provide its sterilizing, moisture supplementing or oil removing effect to the skin and also that such components of the carbide are mild to the skin, not causing skin problems. The “Bincho” charcoal is a type of high-quality charcoal made from holm oak (
Quercus phillyraeoides
), a specialty product of a region called “Kumano” in Japan.
Based on the above finding, the present inventor first conceived of a product in the form of a pouch made of a mesh-like or porous fabric storing therein fine powder of Bincho charcoal therein and actually made a trial product.
When this trial product was put to use, however, water and a portion of the fine powder carbide were just lost before they could be used as they escaped through the pouch fabric. So that, when the pouch was about to applied to the skin, the fine powder of carbide hardly oozed out of the pouch. Hence, it was not possible to apply a sufficient amount of the substance to the skin. Moreover, the other portion of the fine powder remaining within the pouch had lost fluidity with water absorption therein so that the entire pouch became like a hard block, uncomfortable to be applied to the skin. Therefore, the product was proved unsuitable for commercial production unless some improvement was made thereon.
On the other hand, wood vinegar is known. This wood vinegar liquid is produced by diluting or refining liquid concentrate obtained by cooling and condensing smoke generated from a charcoal kiln during production of charcoal. The conventional applications of the wood vinegar liquid include their uses as soil activating agent or insecticide dusting agent to be contained in agricultural or horticultural products. Wood vinegar is also used as a skin relief agent for direct application for relief of atopic dermatitis or athlete's foot or it is sometimes provided in the form of a bathing product to be put into a bathtub for the same purpose. These applications are possible because the wood vinegar liquid is comprised of natural components. There are may other applications of wood vinegar liquid, not described here.
Especially, the component analysis has revealed that wood vinegar liquid contains various minerals and ionic substances such as calcium ion, magnesium ion, etc. And, it has been confirmed that these components are beneficial for skin care. For example, according to a report published by a certain cosmetics research institute, calcium ion and magnesium ion are found in abundance between the epidermis and stratum corneum, indicating that supplement of calcium ion and magnesium ion will be effective for conditioning skin texture and maintaining healthy skin. From these findings, it is understood that wood vinegar is useful for skin care.
In recent years, as described hereinbefore, there is a growing concern about skin care not only among females in limited generations, but among general population regardless of sex or ages.
Under such circumstances, however, the industries' have not yet fully exploited the possibility of using wood vinegar liquid as a skin care agent. And, those wood vinegar products currently on the market are mainly in the form of a bottled product.
However, when a user uses such bottled wood vinegar liquid product as skin care agent, as the wood vinegar per se is liquid, the user will usually soak absorbent gauze or cotton ball or the like in the liquid and apply this to his/her skin or will prefer to use a towel dedicated for this use because of a characteristic smell of the wood vinegar liquid and soak it in the liquid and apply it to the skin.
Therefore, in order to use wood vinegar liquid as a skin care agent, the user needs to prepare separately such an article as absorbent gauze and needs also to clear it away after use. Moreover, as wood vinegar has a strong characteristic smell, the user will have to handle it with great care so that the liquid will not be attached to the clothes. For these reasons, the bottled wood vinegar liquid, as a skin care agent, is an unhandy product and also presents the difficulty of its use by an appropriate portion. Faced these difficulties and inconvenience, many users tend to just give up using wood vinegar liquid as skin care agent before long although they desire to use it regularly for an extended period of time.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described state of the art. A first object of the invention is to provide a skin-care pouch containing fine powder of carbide which oozes out of a sealed enclosure of the pouch when needed for its application to the skin, the pouch also giving comfortable feel to the skin when contacted therewith.
A second object of the invention is to provide such pouch as a handy and convenient product.
For accomplishing the first object noted above, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is proposed a skin-care pouch comprising: a number of carbide aggregations including carbides in the form of small pieces, granules or particles; water-absorbent shape-keeping agent which is gelled by absorbing water upon contact therewith; and a sealed enclosure storing the carbide aggregations and the water-absorbent shape-keeping agent therein, the sealed enclosure being formed of a fabric capable of permeating water and the carbides therethrough.
With the above-described skin-care pouch according to the invention, when the pouch is soaked in warm or cold water and rubbed or squeezed therein, the water enters the sealed enclosure to gel the water-absorbent shape-keeping agent therein, so that the pouch keeps its shape. When withdrawn out of the water, the pouch is maintained under the moist condition by retaining the water absorbed therein. Then, when placed in contact with skin under this condition, the pouch allows the fine powder of carbides to ooze out in a controlled manner together with the water to be applied to the skin. As a result, a sufficient amount of carbides may be applied to the skin.
Further, as the inner content of the water-soaked pouch is maintained in shape under the gelled condition by the water-absorbent shape-keeping agent, the content retains high fluidity, providing good cushioning effect to improve the ski

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