Why Menopause Changes Your Skin, and What Actually Helps
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Thinning, dryness, sudden sensitivity, breakouts that feel more like adolescence than midlife: menopause can change skin in ways that catch a lot of women off guard. Falling oestrogen affects collagen production, elasticity, and the skin's ability to hold onto moisture, which is why skincare that worked for years can suddenly stop working during perimenopause and menopause.
Understanding It From the Inside
At BioNovu, this isn't just something we've researched, it's something founder Gemma Hornsby Lofthouse, a nurse practitioner, lived through firsthand.
Her own early menopause in her thirties brought skin changes alongside everything else, at a time when she was still years from a diagnosis and searching for answers on her own. That experience gave her a level of understanding that goes beyond clinical, and it's shaped the way she treats skin in her clinic and the devices in the BioNovu portfolio range.
Where Red Light Therapy Fits In
This is where photobiomodulation, delivered through NovuMask™, has a clear role to play. Red and near infrared light works at a cellular level to stimulate collagen production, support skin barrier function, and calm inflammation, three things that decline noticeably as oestrogen drops. For menopausal skin specifically, that means support for firmness, hydration, and resilience, without introducing hormones or harsh actives that can irritate already sensitised skin.
NovuMask also includes yellow and blue light alongside red, and both have a role to play in menopausal skin. Yellow light works on the vasculature within the skin, helping to calm redness and sensitivity, something many women notice more as oestrogen declines. Blue light helps address the changing, hormonally driven skin that comes with menopause, including the breakouts some women experience for the first time in years, or even decades.
It's a gentle, evidence based approach that fits into an existing routine, and one that's become a genuine focus area for BioNovu as more women reach out with the same menopause related skin concerns Gemma once experienced herself.
Looking Beyond Skin
Understanding menopause this closely, both personally and clinically, has been the basis for researching and developing a new product, driven by just how much more red light therapy could support during this stage of life, beyond the face alone. It's part of why the brand has started exploring what a wider, dedicated approach to menopause and women's health could look like, with something new currently taking shape for next year.
If you want to be among the first to hear more as that develops, alongside skin health tips backed by the same research, you can sign up to the BioNovu mailing list below.