Beauty Sleep Is Having a Rebrand ft. Dr Shabana Daya and BON CHARGE

For years, “beauty sleep” felt like one of those phrases we threw around without thinking too much about what it actually meant. Get your eight hours, drink some water, take your makeup off before bed, sleep tea, no phones before bed, keeping your bedroom cool, eye mask, etc etc. Sensible advice, sure, but hardly something we were discussing alongside new age skin technology.

But now, that conversation is changing. Beauty has become increasingly interested in what happens beyond the bathroom cabinet. Sleep trackers sit alongside skincare routines. LED Red light masks have made their way into our evening rituals (myself included). We’re talking about cortisol, circadian rhythms, science and recovery with the same enthusiasm once reserved for retinol.

Wellness has always had its fair share of passing trends, but the way we think about skin does seem to be changing. What happens outside of our skincare routine is becoming just as much a part of the beauty conversation as the products we put on our faces.

For Dr Shabana Daya, a UK-based integrative aesthetic doctor and GP with postgraduate training in dermatology, that connection has always been important.

“In clinic, I don't treat the skin as an isolated organ; I treat the individual as a whole,” she told Talk Beauty To Me.

It sounds obvious when you put it like that, but beauty hasn’t always behaved that way. In a sense, “beauty sleep” does exist, but unfortunately, buying another moisturiser cannot negotiate with your circadian rhythm on your behalf, as much as I would like it to. While we sleep, the body gets to work on many of the processes involved in repair and regeneration. Dr Daya explains that skin cell turnover increases, the skin barrier is restored and collagen production is supported, while cortisol levels naturally decline. When sleep is regularly disrupted, those processes can be affected.

“Poor sleep can impair skin repair, barrier function, and overall resilience, contributing to dullness and accelerated signs of ageing,” she says.

Dr. Shabana Daya

It helps explain why the conversation around sleep has moved beyond simply feeling rested the next morning. For beauty consumers in particular, there’s a growing awareness that the condition of our skin isn’t determined solely by the products we apply to it. Stress matters. Hormones matter. Nutrition matters. Sleep matters. But that doesn’t mean your skincare routine is suddenly redundant. Rather, Dr Daya sees internal health and external skincare as two sides of the same conversation.

“It's less about choosing between topical skincare or in-clinic treatments and internal wellness, and more about understanding how the two work together.”

Beauty and wellness have been slowly creeping into each other’s territory for years. Skincare brands are talking about stress. Beauty retailers like MECCA are now selling supplements. Devices that once looked like something you’d encounter in a clinic are sitting on bedside tables. Even the language has changed. “Anti-ageing” is increasingly sharing space with terms like longevity, skin health and healthy ageing. Dr Daya believes it reflects consumers becoming more interested in the long game.

“Rather than chasing quick fixes, consumers are increasingly interested in supporting the body's natural processes through consistent, sustainable habits that promote both health and appearance.”

That shift is important, particularly in an industry that has spent decades convincing us that the next launch might finally be the one. We’re still buying skincare, obviously. We’re beauty people, not saints. But the routine is getting bigger, and with the magnitude of knowledge and information you can find online, a good before-and-after or impressive ingredient list doesn’t necessarily carry the same weight anymore. We want to know what the evidence says, whether the claims hold up and, increasingly, whether something deserves a place in our routine at all.

A few years ago, “biohacking” could conjure images of Silicon Valley executives with elaborate morning routines and an alarming number of wearable devices. Now, it’s everywhere. I may be a little late to the game, but I’ve just discovered that if I wear my Apple Watch to bed, it can track my sleep. But Dr Daya’s definition is surprisingly simple: using evidence-based strategies intentionally to support health and wellbeing. That might mean prioritising sleep, exercising regularly, managing stress, eating well or paying more attention to light exposure. Technology can be part of it, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the star.

“It's less about finding quick fixes or pushing the body to its limits, and more about making informed choices that support how we function and feel every day,” she explains.

In other words, biohacking doesn’t necessarily require turning your bedroom into a testing facility. Dr Daya believes its mainstream popularity is part of a broader move towards preventative health. Rather than waiting until we feel terrible to pay attention to our bodies, we’re becoming more interested in the everyday behaviours that influence how we feel over time.

“When it's grounded in science rather than trends, biohacking becomes less about doing more, and more about doing the right things consistently.”

And then there’s light. Light is such an ordinary part of our day that it’s easy to forget our bodies are constantly responding to it.

“Light is one of the most powerful regulators of our biology,” says Dr Daya. “It plays a key role in regulating our circadian rhythm, the body’s internal clock, which affects sleep quality, hormone balance, energy levels, and the repair processes essential for overall health. Natural light exposure, particularly in the morning, helps align our circadian rhythm, promoting daytime alertness and supporting healthy melatonin production in the evening. On the other hand, excessive exposure to artificial light, especially blue light from screens at night, can disrupt melatonin release and negatively impact sleep quality. This is particularly important for skin health, as many of the skin’s restorative processes take place during sleep. Poor sleep can impair skin repair, barrier function, and overall resilience, contributing to dullness and accelerated signs of ageing.”

Which, naturally, brings us back to skin. If sleep is an important period for skin repair and regeneration, anything consistently interfering with sleep has the potential to affect those processes too. But light is interesting for another reason.

Specific wavelengths of light, particularly red and near-infrared, are also being explored for their effects on the skin and cellular function. Dr Daya points to photobiomodulation as one area she’s particularly interested in, and despite the rather clinical name, you’ve probably already encountered it. Think LED face masks, red light therapy panels and the light-based treatments increasingly appearing in beauty and wellness routines.

Science lesson! Photobiomodulation uses specific wavelengths of red or near-infrared light delivered through devices such as LEDs or lasers. Unlike treatments that rely on heat to create a response in the skin, the light is absorbed by cells and can influence biological processes involved in energy production and repair.

Within beauty, photobiomodulation has become particularly interesting for its potential applications in skin health. Research has explored its effects on wound healing and acne, while red and near-infrared light are also being studied for their influence on fibroblast activity, the cells involved in producing collagen and supporting the skin’s structure.

And it isn’t limited to skincare. Photobiomodulation is being investigated across areas ranging from pain management and exercise recovery to hair growth, with emerging research also looking at possible neurological applications. For Dr Daya, it’s an example of where the overlap between beauty, wellness and technology becomes particularly interesting. Rather than light simply being something we need to manage for better sleep, specific wavelengths are increasingly being studied for how they might interact with the body at a cellular level. It’s also an area she works in through her role on BON CHARGE’s Scientific Advisory Board, where she advises on light therapy, recovery and biohacking. Her own routine combines the decidedly low-tech with the high-tech.

“I always try to start my day with natural daylight, whether that’s stepping outside for a walk or simply enjoying my morning routine outdoors,” she says.

She also incorporates red and near-infrared light therapy into her skincare routine using the BON CHARGE Red Light Face Mask. For Dr Daya, the combination is a good example of where wellness is heading: technology complementing the boring-but-important basics rather than replacing them.

Shop BON CHARGE here

Of course, there’s another side to all this. The more interested we become in longevity and optimisation, the more products appear promising to help us achieve it. Wellness has become an enormous commercial category, and terms like “biohacking”, “cortisol”, “inflammation” and “hormonal balance” can travel through social media much faster than the research behind them. For consumers, figuring out what deserves attention can be difficult. Dr Daya argues that evidence needs to come before the trend.

“What sets BON CHARGE apart is that science is the foundation of every product it develops,” she says, pointing to the brand’s Scientific Advisory Board and its focus on reviewing emerging research.

Her broader prediction is that consumers are going to demand more of that scrutiny from beauty and wellness companies. Over the next five years, she expects the category to become increasingly personalised and science-led, with greater interest in red and near-infrared light therapy, circadian lighting, wearable technology, biomarker testing and evidence-based supplementation. Continuous glucose monitoring and AI-driven health platforms could also become more common as consumers gain access to increasingly detailed information about their own bodies. But perhaps more importantly, she expects people to ask harder questions. What does this actually do? What evidence supports it? Do I need it? Is this improving my health, or am I simply being sold optimisation in a prettier package? For an industry that can occasionally get a little carried away with a trending ingredient and good packaging, greater scrutiny isn’t a bad thing.

After talking about light therapy, wearables, biomarkers and the increasingly futuristic direction of wellness, we asked Dr Daya to choose just one habit for better skin and wellbeing. Her answer wasn’t a device. It was sleep.

“While topical treatments and procedures have an important role in skin health, they cannot replace the physiological repair processes that occur during sleep,” she says.

Consistent, restorative sleep supports far more than how our skin looks the next morning. It plays a role in immune regulation, hormonal balance, metabolic health, nervous system function and cellular repair.

We have more technology available to us than ever. We can track sleep from our wrists, wear red light masks on the couch and collect data about our bodies that would have sounded ridiculous to the average beauty consumer not that long ago. But in reality, the fundamentals haven’t disappeared. Sleep well. Get outside. Move your body. Manage stress where you can. Eat properly. Use skincare that supports your skin rather than fighting with it. The future of beauty may be increasingly high-tech, but it might also make us better at understanding the very ordinary things our bodies have needed all along.

Shop BON CHARGE here: https://au.boncharge.com/