**5.3 Effects of anthocyanins on cosmetology and skin care**

Young people's skin is nutritious and white than aged peoples. With the increase of age, the skin will get rougher, wrinkled, and darker and gradually senile plaques form. This is the reason why the skin has some substances, like SOD, CAT, and GSH-Px, that can prevent the skin from aging. There are other antioxidants such as vitamin E and vitamin C also to assist regulating the balance of oxygen free radical for preventing skin aging and damage. With the increase of age, the enzyme activity that removes oxygen free radical drops and the antioxidant content also drops in the skin. Then, the excessive harmful oxygen free radical is able to bring about the cell damage. If the complement of a few exogenous free radical scavengers is not immediately provided, the balance of free radical of the skin is hardly maintained, and good skin is hardly possessed [10]. The present studies indicate that proanthocyanidins are good antioxidant and have free radical scavenging abilities and also can promote the covalent cross-linking of collagen molecules, inhibit the elastase production and prevent the degradation of elastin, prevent skin aging and laxity, and reduce the excessive secretion of sebaceous glands to skin. In addition, proanthocyanidins can combine with proteins by the form of hydrophobic bonds and hydrogen bonds, which can shrink skin pores and tighten skin. Proanthocyanidins can reduce the o-benzoquinone structure of the melanin to phenolic structure to fade the pigment and inhibit the key enzyme tyrosinase phthalidomide activity of melanin synthesis to achieve white skin and decrease spot efficacy. Proanthocyanidins can absorb ultraviolet light and inhibit the process of lipid peroxidation. Supplement of external grape seed proanthocyanidins can decrease Fas protein expression and increase the skin bcl-2 protein expression after the irradiation of skin and tend the skin to normal skin status, which indicates that proanthocyanidins from grape seed can reduce the sun damage to a certain extent [59–61]. In addition, proanthocyanidins also have the effects in treating skin inflammation, moisturizing and antiaging skin. In the present, proanthocyanidins, as raw materials, are added to successfully produce the night cream, skin whitener, sunscreen, mouthwash, and shampoo in France, Italy, and Japan market [62, 63]. Proanthocyanidins isolated from grape

seeds, a face cream based on the characteristics of Chinese elderly people's skin in the Chinese market was developed, which has been proven stabile to achieve antiwrinkle and moisturizing efficacy.
