Neck band for cooling or heating

Abstract

An attachable, adjustable in size neck ring made of a lightweight fabric with two plies on one side for extra comfort that includes hook and pile adjustable fasteners and a gel pack that can be heated or cooled for providing additional cooling or heating to a human being during exercising. The neck ring fabric chamber can be separated from the gel pack when not in use and for heating or cooling the gel pack.

Description

BACKGROUND OF INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] This invention relates to devices for cooling human beings and animals or for heating human beings or animals that can be worn by the user for cooling or heating for limited periods of time especially adapted for use around the person's neck during activities. [0003] 2. Description of Related Art [0004] Exercise by human beings or animals whether it being the form of athletics, recreation or training strictly for health benefits is quite commonplace. Typically, exercise has become a year round event regardless of weather (summertime or wintertime). It is not uncommon to see several people jogging regardless of the outdoor temperature (hot or cold). Many sports such as football require people to play games in all sorts of inclement weather. Even sports such as tennis are played outdoors in the summer in very hot climates of the world. It has become quite common to see people carrying water jugs or water containers while ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008] The advantage of the present invention is that it provides extreme cooling directly to an area of the human being that can utilize the cooling through contact with the blood flow of the person and the skin of the person while at the same time being extremely lightweight, adjustable and portable. Someone can participate in virtually any sport wearing the neck ring because of its lightweight.

[0009] The same device is capable of being used in cold weather or below freezing weather by heating the gel pack in hot water or in a microwave oven and then placing the gel pack device into the neck ring.

[0010] In order to use the device for cooling, the user would take the gel pack, put it into the refrigerator freezer and let the gel pack sit there for a couple of hours. When the person is ready to start the exercise, he would take the gel pack out of the freezer, insert the gel pack directly into the fabric elliptical passage that is sized to fit the gel pack in length, width and circumference and then attach the neck ring around the user's neck using the adjustable fasteners. The same procedure is followed for heating except for the gel pack is heated instead of chilled.

[0011] The gel pack material that can be used in this invention is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,379,582 entitled “Crosslinked Co-Polymer Composition for Thermal Energy Storage” issued to Putnam Apr. 30, 2002 and is incorporated by reference herein.

[0012] It is an object of this invention to provide an improved, lightweight, portable device that is worn around the neck of a person for heating or cooling of the human being or animal during exercise.

[0013] It is another object of this invention to provide a lightweight device that can provide cooling or heating to a human being or an animal that is convenient to wear.

Problems solved by technology

However, drinking a lot of fluids even though it is very essential for your health does not always provide the necessary cooling that would be healthy for human beings who are working out and participating in a lot of physical exercise especially when it is warm out or extremely cold out.

The device is quite bulky and looks very uncomfortable.

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