Precision, Peptides & Regenerative Science with Dr. Anthony Nakhla of Eighth Day

0:00Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy. It's Zekda. I'm really excited about our episode today because because we're interviewing a brand that's really been kind of a game changer for a while now. I'm sure a lot of you have heard about them. So without further ado, please welcome Dr. Anthony Nakla, who is the founder of 8th Day. Welcome, Dr. Nakla. I'm so excited to host you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to dive in. I've been a fan of 8th Day, I think, long before we connected. I remember seeing your products and trying them myself prior to ever connecting with your team.

0:33and I find it to be very unique, your approach, coming from the regenerative side of medicine and bringing it to skincare. I'd love for you to walk us down memory lane, if you don't mind, and tell us about your medical background. What led you to creating a skincare line? Yeah, thank you for that intro, and I'm humbled to hear that you've enjoyed the brand and the products. So I'm a dermatologic surgeon focused on reconstructive treatments for patients that have had skin cancer, specifically something called Mohs micrographic surgery. And this is typically for facial skin cancer and people who have complicated facial tumors.

1:09So working a lot with patients that have had pretty disfiguring types of skin cancer and using wound healing techniques to try to help them. My career began when I graduated from residency and I worked with one of the foremost dermatologists in West Hollywood, who was at the time treating HIV patients with what's called facial lipoatrophy. So people who had sort of lost facial volume due to the HIV medications that they were taking. And this idea of bringing somebody back to baseline, bringing them back to themselves again, and the power of that, it became my beauty philosophy. It's what I gravitated towards, which is reconstructive work as opposed to sort of cosmetic enhancements or changing somebody's appearance to sort of meet some sort of perceived standard of beauty.

1:59So through this work, I had the privilege of restoring patients back to baseline and bringing themselves back to themselves again. And in my practice, my beauty philosophy is that you look best when you look like yourself. And so I wanted to translate this work that I was doing on the regenerative and wound healing side and sort of bring that to life through a comprehensive skincare line with my beauty philosophy in mind of trying to achieve sort of the best version the most natural and unique version of yourself that's unchanged or unfiltered or un sort of affected by what the cultural zeitgeist of telling you what to look like is yeah it's really yeah no I love that I mean it's really fascinating because the world the wound healing from the side of going to the hard medicine it's very complex as you know and when I think about skincare it's very fascinating to see how skincare is approached like this this vanity thing right but then when you look at the when you look at science and you think about like what is the skin how does it work it's almost intuitive right from the medical side that we would approach it from this angle of no you have to bring in like serious medical principles here because you're dealing with microtraumas every day.

3:20You're dealing with damage on some level every day, whether that's through UV or environment. So can you go through maybe some fundamentals of wound healing for us that we should understand and maybe some of the things you brought forward? You were thinking of how to formulate this in a skincare line. Sure. That's a great question. Yeah. So first and foremost, the field of dermatology is a specialty all of its own. It's essentially four years of post-medical school training just focused on the human skin, which is your largest organ. Much the same way a cardiologist focuses just on the heart, a dermatologist and the training of a dermatologist is so intensely fixated on skin.

4:01And the reason why I opened with that is that we have to think about the expertise that it takes to understand how human skin works. And really, this is about studying and experiencing and encountering skin firsthand. So the human body has this really incredible, innate ability to heal and regenerate itself. Sometimes when I remove these large tumors from people's faces, we'll allow them to heal over the course of a few weeks before we even stitch them up because the body has this ability to sort of contract wounds, lay down new collagen, build elastin, and essentially contract a really large and complicated wound.

4:42And so we use ingredients in that process that helps stimulate the wound healing cascade. And the reason why I say cascade is it's almost like a stepwise process that occurs where you're signaling one cell to tell another cell to tell another cell to do its job. And this is very different than skincare that's sort of focused on botanical extracts or what plant cells can offer. This is about tapping into the body's innate healing mechanisms that are really far more powerful and far more focused on human skin and the human biology itself. Yeah, no, that's really, I'm glad you bring that up actually, because there has been this buzz around plant-based.

5:29And I've been kind of trying to get people to understand that there's this whole issue with compatibility and, you know, there's a lot of stuff there to unpack. But I like what you said and I like how you explained the skin as an overall organ. I think for a lot of us, we don't really think about it because how many times do we think about the skin as we have to maintain it like an organ? Think about the liver like this, we think about heart health, but no one really goes in and tells us, like when you look at preventative medicine, for example, and no one tells us like, you guys, you need to do something for your skin.

6:02And so I think because it's so resilient consumers, you don't really just sit around and think about what should I be doing day in and day out for my skin. So it's very fascinating, actually, when you look at it from that angle. For me, at least, it's very fascinating. So I want to talk about the core principle of A.C.A. You're using peptide-rich plasma, which I don't think a lot of us understand what that is. Can you dive into the science of that? We really care about giving customers potent formulas that perform. I would say that one of the brand pillars is that we use what's called bioidentical ingredients.

6:38So these are ingredients that are biologically identical to what's already part of your skin and what your skin recognizes. So the same signaling molecules that I spoke about earlier that tell your cells to heal and to repair themselves, these are the ingredients that we focus on. And so our tagline for the brain is that we speak the language of skin. And that means that we're speaking to skin cells in their own sort of native code that helps them to understand what's going on and to promote the healthiest version of themselves, which in turn is the most beautiful type of skin, Skin that's resilient and plump and well hydrated and is filled with collagen and elastin and all the things that make your skin healthy and resilient are the things that make your skin beautiful.

7:25So peptide-rich plasmas are patent-pending skincare technology, and it's composed of these 24 bioidentical peptides, growth factors, and amino acids that stimulate skin cells' innate healing and repair mechanism. So I've identified these ingredients that are similar to some of the ingredients that we use in our wound dressings to help repair complicated facial wounds. And they're composed of not so sexy sounding ingredients, I would say, but they're the type of ingredients that you might not hear about, but they really work. Things like insulin, like growth factor, TNF, alpha, the immune modulators that help your skin to repair and rebuild themselves.

8:10interesting yeah no it's fascinating because i think people don't really we don't think whatever cell is secreting is actually going to help it in the long run with its health i i don't think a lot of times it's intuitive for people to understand like about in terms of cell signaling like what is it really that they respond to many times you see in skincare i've seen this a lot in the industry where people are coming up with these incredibly complex biomimetic peptides that sometimes they're not they're just not going to land because it's it's just very difficult for the cell to respond to something it's not used to i mean cellular biology is so complex that it makes more intuitive sense to sense to work with what is actually coming up if you're having like certain cytokines certain proteins secreted in media that you're growing cells and that's more likely to actually be biocompatible with those cells so i think that's also the conversation that needs to we had is with the growing industry, people keep chasing these buzzworthy in biotech ingredients.

9:08But in reality, where's that compatibility data there, like with cellular biology in mind? So I think that's very fascinating what you're doing, keeping that at home with what the cells use to responding to, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's true. And I would say understanding the cell and the molecule and the response of the cell to that molecule is really key, as well as understanding how you can even deliver that molecule to the right cell. So a lot of our focus is on dermal cell health, because your epidermal layer, first layer of your skin is constantly sloughing off. So the real action is in the deep cellular level, the level of the dermis, and even the subcutaneous fat.

9:50So we try to use ingredients and delivery systems that actually penetrate skin. Skin has this incredible ability, as it should to sort of repel and essentially keep things out. Well, we're trying to hack the body a little bit and actually deliver molecules to the areas where we get the most benefit and where we really start to see that lasting change, which is the deep cellular level in the dermis and subcutaneous fat. Yeah, that's really fascinating. And I agree with you. I think sometimes, I think we chase buzzwords, but really we should be chasing things like delivery technology. That is the next, I think, frontier for skincare.

10:30I definitely look for that a lot more, I think, in my own skincare preferences now than I ever did before because of exactly what you said. Like if it's not getting to the cells, you're not going to do anything. Nothing's going to happen. So for consumers to be mindful of that, I think is so critical. Especially now. Everyone has a skincare brand these days. So it's very, very difficult to sift through all of that and figure out what's actually going to work. And that's very relevant. I think a good example of that is, so we just developed in our ultra rich moisturizer, which we just launched, we use three molecular weights of hyaluronic acid sort of to comprehensively layer the skin and to hit it at different levels of penetration.

11:09But also we added a really unique technology that combines L-ornithine, which is an amino acid that helps prevent fatty acid degradation by up to 29%, which is actually a very significant amount. If you think about fat cells in your skin, it's what keeps your skin beautiful. Your skin, as you get older, you start to sort of hollow and you lose facial volume. And what we attempt to do with fillers is restore that facial volume. but really it's about protecting the longevity of your fat cells. So thinking about skin in the multi-dimensions and trying to address the different layers of skin is something that we really care about and something that when we thoughtfully craft these formulas, we're using delivery systems that actually get the molecule to the right place.

11:57Yeah, that's very fascinating that you bring that up. We hear a lot about, for example, I'd love for you to kind of explain this a little bit is that with anything related to peptides or anything related to, I guess, more complex cell signaling, everyone talks about things like regenerating collagen, regenerating elastin. What are your thoughts on that? Is that the right way for us to be thinking about regenerative skincare or should we be more focused on what you've described with the fat cells and other components? Yeah, I think it's all of those things as opposed to either or. I think that Just as in my practice, when I do see a cosmetic patient or when I see a patient that's in need of sort of a global approach to facial rejuvenation and reconstruction, we have a toolbox of many things.

12:43We have lasers. We have ingredients, biotechnology derived wound membranes that we place. So with skincare, you want to address all of those things. In our skincare line, we care about exfoliative products. We care about stimulating collagen, elastin. We talk about sort of stimulating your own sort of inborn hyaluronic acid secretion through fibroblasts. And then we talk about fat cells. So I think you have to focus on all of the aspects. And the nice thing is that the direction of skincare technology and sort of bioengineered ingredients is that we're addressing these from different angles. these different pain points, we're really affecting change now with the type of ingredients that we're talking about.

13:34It's fascinating. Now, I want to learn more about something because there's a debate going on right now in the skincare world where people are now talking about this phenomenon of ingredient overload, especially in luxury skincare products. Can you speak on this a little bit in terms of is there such a thing? And what is too much when it comes to ingredients? No, I have a different point of view. I think that it's already hard to get skincare to perform at the level that we want it to. So these sort of like one ingredient per bottle type of products are actually, I would say, products that we've modeled ourselves against.

14:17So it was always fascinating for me to see a patient come to my office with hyaluronic acid serum by itself, and then vitamin C by itself and then retinol by itself. And then I'm asking them when and how they can apply all this stuff. And it's like a 20 step process. And if you end up mixing all of these products anyway on your skin, why not just combine them in one singular application that's compatible, that is stable, and that has the right delivery mechanism. So in the case of skincare, more is more when it comes to bioactive ingredients. And I think the way to ensure that is to really take a hard look at your inky list.

15:00And if it's two sentences long, you're not getting much out of your skincare product. If your active ingredients are really present at clinical levels, and there's a lot of them, you're maximizing your time and you're maximizing the effects. It's kind of like making a smoothie, right? Like if you throw a whole bunch of nutrient dense foods in the blender, you're getting a real action packed meal as opposed to one or two ingredients. right no i'm so glad you said that because that has always been like one of my fusing points i guess when i look out into the industry and see how consumers are interacting with the products because i i get it you see a product that has the urea and the hyaluronic acid and all of these wonderful ingredients but then you're like if you combine them together like you said are you even are yourselves even exposed to them because after one or two layers you're not even seeing the benefits of the third, fourth, fifth, whatever layer.

15:55When people are literally doing what, nine-step skincare routines at this point, it's gotten a little out of hand in that way. So it's fascinating. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. For me, it's very hard to sort of control somebody's regimen if they're mixing and matching a lot of products. That's why a lot of our customers and most of my patients, they're really committed to the line. So like they know that when they use this cleanser, they can use this resurfacing tonic right after, and then they know they can use my serum right after. And then it's very hard to, I would say, mix and match a lot of different things when you don't understand exactly what's in those products.

16:37So our really serious customers are buying into the entire process and the entire line. And I think that's the way to control what preservatives are in these products, what active levels of ingredients, what's the step or what's the order by which to use exfoliative product and then a peptide and then an amino acid. So all of that is important. And I think the step-by-step process is also key in understanding whether you're mixing the right things together. Right. No, absolutely. And I wanted to ask you about this because there is this whole phenomena of ingredient synergy as well, especially when you're working with very high-tech ingredients and you get into the biotech space.

17:21Can you speak a little bit about that in terms of what are some things maybe when you were going through the formulation process for the line, what were some ingredients that you found to be incredibly synergistic in how they work and the benefits they provide for the skin? I think that's a great question. So the product that we're most known for is the regenerative serum. So that has the highest concentration of our peptide-rich plasma. The serum formula itself is patented, which is very hard to do in skincare. And the synergies I found were combining, yes, hyaluronic acid, but also all of the amazing neuropeptides that are available, like GABA, for example, and then slipping in a couple really amazing antioxidants that actually perform even better than the most commonly used antioxidants like vitamins A, C, and E.

18:11So we use savage ginger root extract, and we use knotgrass flavonoids, which are really high, super potent scavengers of free radicals. And I found that getting these to work together and play nicely in a stable formula took a lot of time and energy. But once we were able to do that, what you're essentially doing is combining six or seven serums into one. So I found this synergy in putting a lot of categories of ingredients into one bottle and the results sort of speak for themselves. That product has sold out multiple times and the clinicals on it are really amazing. And we don't only do consumer perception studies like a lot of brands do.

18:54We focus on true metrics. We use cutometer studies and we measure things like skin firmness and elasticity and hydration levels. So we're getting that real independent look at whether the product is performing or not. And the clinicals on that product are amazing. Wow, that's really fascinating. I'm glad that you are looking at the real data. That's very, very important. I don't think a lot of people can say that. It's kind of one of my pet peeves as a consumer is when I don't see the real data. It's like, what did you guys test and how many participants were there? I mean, there isn't a lot of transparency around that.

19:29So I really appreciate that you've done that. You've done it the right way. It's very cool. Yeah, thank you. I think we owe it to this customer. I mean, our customer is the most discerning, highest paying luxury customer. This is the customer that for many years was buying story, fantastical storytelling, some Amazonian berry at the bottom of the rainforest or some crazy story that they don't buy anymore. Now it's all about science and efficacy and yes, beautiful packaging and a really beautiful experience, but they want products that perform and they want to see skin changes, like real change, real science, real results and real changes in their skin.

20:11right no i love that and i'm i'm really excited to see that shift in consumers because i think there were a handful of us the nerds for a long time and now everybody's kind of getting with it like you really have to look at the science and you have to dive deep and try to understand how the skin works so i i love that the industry is shifting in this direction it's very cool to watch i agree with you yeah i've been a part of the nerd team for a while as well so fellow nerds Yeah. I want to ask you because as a Mohs surgeon, you see the long-term effects, environmental damage especially. Can you explain to us what misconceptions do you think consumers still have about prevention versus reversal when it comes to skin health?

20:53Yeah, that's a really great question. I've been in private practice for 16 years. I've had the privilege of working with over 10 ,000 surgical skin cancer patients. Most recently, I operated on a very close friend of mine, one of my best friends, who's my age, who's, I always joke with him that he's the best looking one out of us. And it broke my heart to remove a gigantic basal cell carcinoma from the center of his nose. And we ended up reconstructing him in a way that the scar is almost imperceptible, but it did leave a giant scar in the end. And he suffered through that process and procedure.

21:32He looks great. But again, it's not it's never perfect. It's never the same as it was before. And I'm seeing a lot more young female patients with skin cancer, like in their 30s and 40s. So the number one skin health rule, despite what anything you hear on TikTok or social media elsewhere, is that using SPF is it's akin to smoking, like not using SPF for laying out in the sun, it's like smoking two packs a day. The level of damage and the potential for skin cancer has already been established. There's no question about it. You can get vitamin D elsewhere. But this idea of baking your skin in the sun is so outdated.

22:14And it's something that we need to get really serious about because more and more I'm seeing young, beautiful people with skin cancer. And it's even harder to see. Of course, it's hard to treat anybody with skin cancer. It's a little less painful when they're in their 70s and 80s, and they don't necessarily care about a giant scar on their face. It's extra painful when it's a young, beautiful person. And it's the number one anti-aging and skin health rule. It's the unbreakable skin commandment, I call it, is using daily SPF. So as far as prevention, that's it. Like it hasn't changed, still the same.

22:51I really prefer zinc oxide products like the one in our daily SPF, which is formulated with epizinc. That's our proprietary blend of just plain zinc that just disappears on your skin. You almost feel like it's not on. And then as far as reversal goes, there are a lot of methods in dermatologist offices to help reverse sun damage. The easiest is to use a topical retinoid at bedtime every night. That's been shown to accelerate the removal of precancerous lesions and reduce cancerous lesions on the face. So it's not only an anti-aging tip, but it's a really great skin health and preventative measures to use retinoids.

23:32We have a retinal in our night cream treatment, which is 250 times stronger than standard retinol that I really love. It's extended release, microencapsulated. It doesn't cause any irritation, but you can use any retinoid of your choice. I happen to like that one because it goes on and it doesn't really irritate your skin at all. And it really performs very well. So it hasn't changed much throughout the years. It's SPF and retinoids. And then if you want to get a little bit more courageous, you can see a dermatologist for things like laser resurfacing and frequent skin checks and even things like liquid nitrogen, freezing, precancerous lesions.

24:11those are the best methods that's very interesting and i'm glad you brought up retinol and retinol because there is a huge divide going on right now in the consumer space about people are saying i don't believe in them anymore i don't want to use them because of all the skin purging and there's the other side where people are saying i don't know i mean this is the most studied ingredient and this is the most data that we have around anything so why wouldn't you use it. Where do you stand on that? What are your thoughts on that whole debate? The data is clear. I would consider if you go to any dermatologist's office, those are still the two products that they recommend the most.

24:50It's SPF in the morning and retinoids at bedtime. And in fact, most dermatologists will write you a prescription for one of three retinoids, the strongest versions of retinoids are the prescription strength. Those are usually best for patients that have oily skin or people with acne. And so that's why a lot of people turn to retinol, which is the lightest version or the least, I would say, not only the least irritating, but the least efficacious. And then the in-betweener is retinol, which is the one I use to formulate the night cream treatment. Retinol is one step in the conversion process below the prescription strength retinoids, but it's considerably stronger than retinol.

25:36So retinol is really, I think, the best of both worlds. You're getting the potency without the irritation and it's really a super effective molecule. So I still stand behind retinoids. And I think if you're serious about preventative skincare, as well as anti-aging skincare, it's SPF and retinoids. Those are the, I would say the two most important. Interesting. Yeah. No, I find it to be a interesting debate. I mean, I think that there's definitely the data is obviously data speaks and science speaks, but I think a lot of times when no one talks about, and I think you addressed this earlier when you were describing the formulation and what you've included in the formula, I think people don't concentrate on the idea that you also should use things like antioxidants.

26:23You should be using other supportive ingredients as well. It can be a little harsh on your skin to have just, if you've been prescribed tretinoin and that's all you're using and there's nothing else you're putting on your skin, maybe you're going to see harsher results than somebody who does have this more holistic approach to their maintenance care. So I think that's a fascinating angle for sure when it comes to retinoids. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I agree with you. It's interesting. You're saying there's a debate about this. I think among the true experts, meaning dermatologists, the evidence is clear.

26:59And I don't think I opened with this idea that dermatologists are really the ones who spend four years studying the human skin biology. And so I would say if you're looking for the most accurate data, continue to visit your dermatologist as well as resources found at the American Academy of Dermatology or the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, both of which I'm a member. And you can put a lot of these debates to rest if you find the right sources. Yeah, fair enough. Now, I want to talk about one thing, which is what you brought up earlier, actually, about your consumer. And you were talking about how they are the people that were kind of buying into these extremely luxury, I guess, experiences, right?

27:44And they were chasing the ingredients that we don't really hear about. How do you define luxury when it comes to functional skincare? Yeah, it's a great question. I think that science has become the new luxury. So like I was saying earlier, the old luxury was about extremely over-the-top fancy packaging. Some of the stuff my patients would bring in looked like a spaceship. Ingredients that, yes, they're luxury cues, but they make no sense to put on your skin. For example, diamond-encrusted skincare or caviar or 24-karat gold, almost like hitting you over the head with luxury. That was what our grandmothers loved.

28:27I think the modern customer is well-educated and wants efficacy. I think that's the punchline is that science is the new luxury. And this customer who's serious and has the means to spend does not want the fluff. They want the results. Now that said, they also, I don't think they want to compromise anywhere. So you can find really great scientific skincare products at your dermatologist's office that work, but they smell like omega fatty acid and they go on, they pill, they don't feel good on your skin. So I would say like the pinnacle right now of the desire of the luxury customer is that they want the science, but they don't want to compromise on the experience.