Patent ID: 8388534

Claim:
An apparatus for providing skin care information, the apparatus comprising: an electrode unit adapted to supply a voltage to a user's skin and to detect a current signal in the user's skin, wherein the electrode unit comprises an M electrode; a measurement control unit to measure the user's skin moisture content and sweat gland activity by using the detected current signal; a data calculation unit to derive skin moisture content information by using calculation of interrelation between the skin moisture content and the sweat gland activity, and to generate skin care information corresponding to the skin moisture content information; and an information provider to provide the user with the generated skin care information, wherein the measurement control unit comprises: a signal converter to convert the current signal into a voltage signal; a signal supplier to generate an in-phase signal and an out-of-phase signal with respect to the voltage signal, and supplying the generated in-phase signal and the out-of-phase signal to the voltage signal; a sweat gland activity measurement unit to measure conductance of the current signal by synchronizing the voltage signal and the in-phase signal, and measuring the sweat gland activity of the user's skin from the measured conductance of the current signal; and a skin moisture content measurement unit to measure susceptance of the current signal by synchronizing the voltage signal and the out-of-phase signal, and measuring the skin moisture content of the user's skin from the measured susceptance of the current signal, wherein the susceptance and conductance of the current signal that is detected from the user's skin, supplied with the voltage, by way of the M electrode is used to simultaneously measure skin moisture content and sweat gland activity, wherein the data calculation unit determines whether the sweat gland activity is within a range of a predetermined normal sweat gland activity and when the measured sweat gland activity is within the range of the normal sweat gland activity, the data calculating unit determines that the measured skin moisture content is normally measured without any effect from sweat glands, thereby deriving the skin moisture content information, and wherein the data calculation unit determines the user did not measure the skin moisture content information in a desirable skin moisture content measurement environment and the data calculation unit controls the information provider to provide the user with a measurement environment checklist when the measured sweat gland activity is outside the range of the normal sweat gland activity.