Microstructures and method for treating and conditioning skin which cause less irritation during exfoliation

Abstract

An improved method and apparatus is provided as a system to enhance skin appearance and health, in which skin is cleaned (or exfoliated) and conditioned by use of microelements affixed to a base element or hand-held patch. The dimensions of the microelements are controlled so as to remove a certain number of layers of skin cells and to accumulate those skin cells, along with other foreign substances, into areas between the microelements. In addition, a conditioning compound or therapeutic active can be applied to the exfoliated skin to enhance the skin. Moreover, the amount of accumulated skin cells represents a self-limiting maximum quantity that cannot be substantially exceeded regardless of the number of attempts by a user to re-use the microstructure apparatus. Some of the microelement shapes are purposefully designed with distal ends that exhibit sharp edges rather than sharp tips to reduce skin irritation.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] The present application is divisional of application Ser. No. 10 / 154,686, which is a continuation-in-part to application Ser. No. 09 / 952,403, titled “Microstructures for Treating and Conditioning Skin,” filed on Sep. 14, 2001, which claims priority to U.S. provisional applications Ser. Nos. 60 / 240,730 and 60 / 240,787.TECHNICAL FIELD [0002] The present invention relates generally to systems for treating and conditioning skin and is particularly directed to an article of manufacture used to perform one or more functions such as enhancing skin, removing dead skin cells, removing accumulated make-up and cosmetics, extracting skin constituencies, depositing skin enhancing compositions, and improving skin appearance. The invention is specifically disclosed as a planar array of microelements that delivers an adjunct skin enhancement composition from at least one reservoir attached thereto, or the composition can be applied directly to skin and ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008] Accordingly, it is an advantage of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus that can enhance the health and the appearance of human skin.

[0009] It is another advantage of the present invention to provide an article of manufacture to treat the surface of skin, which is capable of selectively modifying the skin surface and capable of discriminately removing differential amounts of the body's outer skin layer (the stratum corneum).

[0010] It is a further advantage of the present invention to provide articles of manufacture that are capable of removing not only unwanted layers of skin, but can also be fashioned in a manner to selectively remove body hair. At the same time the skin is being conditioned, the articles of manufacture can controllably deposit one or more skin care compositions thereto or provide a skin treatment.

[0011] It is still another advantage of the present invention to provide articles of manufacture which can deliver a metered amount of a composition, remove a specific number of cellular layers (e.g., skin layers), and the like; the articles of manufacture can also be made for any type of onetime treatment after which the individual article is disposed of.

[0012] It is yet another advantage of the present invention to provide an article of manufacturer that can deliver a metered amount of a composition and remove a specific number of cellular layers (e.g., skin layers), and can do so by use of microelements that are not substantially sharp at their most distal ends from the substrate to which the microelements are mounted, thereby causing less irritation to the skin surface as compared to microelements having very sharp distal ends.

[0013] It is still another advantage of the present invention to provide a microstructure apparatus in which a large number of closely-packed microelements are placed on a substrate; when the microstructure is placed against skin and rubbed thereagainst to perform an exfoliation procedure, then skin cells (and perhaps vellus hair) are removed from the skin and accumulate in the spaces between the side walls of the microelements, such that a large majority of the scraped skin cells (and other matter) are removed when the microstructure apparatus is withdrawn from the skin.

Problems solved by technology

However, make-up can be deposited into opened pores and if not thoroughly rinsed can leave the skin with an unwanted film of dirt, dead skin cells, oxidized oil.

These airborne skin cells are distasteful at best, and could represent some type of health hazard in certain situations.

This can be an undesirable situation, since the person may possibly injure himself or herself by being too vigorous, or since the person may achieve nothing by not being vigorous enough.

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