Dr. Antony Nakhla: Founder of Eighth Day Skin

Episode 395

Today I am joined by Dr. Antony Nakla, Founder of Eighth Day Skin. He is a board-certified dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon plus a leading authority in skin cancer treatment including Mohs reconstructive surgery. He developed Eighth Day Skincare, which has a significant cult following, after making the connection between what stem cells and nutrient-rich membranes were doing to help skin regenerate and heal. He then started creating using a blend of bioidentical peptides, growth factors and amino acids to deliver an incredible topical system that gives consumers amazing results. His patent-pending skincare technology is part of a growing trend back to science based modern skin technology to effect real results.

You are going to love hearing more about Dr. Antony’s approach and his products plus how he developed products just by satisfying his curiosity. This episode is filled with a ton of inspiration and information you won’t want to miss it! On this episode of #TheKaraGoldinShow.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be, you just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone, it’s Kara Goldin from the Kara Goldin show. And I’m so excited to have my next guest. Here we have Dr. Anthony Nakhla, who is also known as Tony or Dr. T, as many of his patients call him. But he’s also the founder of an incredible, incredible brand that if you don’t know about it, you absolutely need to know about it. It’s called Eighth Day skin, and we’re going to share a lot more about it because we have Dr. T, I’m gonna start calling him that year today. So he’s a board certified dermatologist and Derma to logic surgeon as well and a leading authority in skin cancer treatment, including most reconstructive surgery. His practice is based in Newport Beach, California. And he developed eight day skincare after making the connection between what stem cells and nutrient rich membranes were doing to help skin regenerate and heal. And he believed and created a blend of bioidentical peptides, growth factors and amino acids to deliver an incredible at home topical system that gives consumers amazing results. And so I am fascinated by all of the science. And you know, this is a product that is, you know, not just developed by a doctor, but he also has a patent pending on it. It’s very, very interesting, for sure. And he’s still practicing. It’s not like he’s retired. He’s busy in his own right, but really believed that this was a product that was not in the market. So I’m super, super excited to hear more about it. So without further ado, welcome.

Dr. Antony Nakhla 2:29
Thank you so much. What an amazing intro Kara I need your friends, like, you

Kara Goldin 2:35
know, it was great. I was having a good time, actually. Cuz there was a lot of words in there that maybe were a little above my paygrade to actually articulate but I loved it and i i Being a redhead and as you and I were talking about before, I’ve been very familiar with most reconstructive surgery, fortunately have not been there yet. But have been really cautious about it and definitely know that terms. So more than anything I would love for you to kind of explain a little bit about your practice. You specialize in reconstructive dermatologic surgery, removing dangerous skin cancers, and then working to make the scars invisible. But please add anything addition to that.

Dr. Antony Nakhla 3:25
Yeah. So thank you. That’s exactly a perfect intro to what I do, I don’t just play one on TV. This is what I do every day. And really the brand was born from my work in reconstruction. And my so all the papers I published when I was a resident and in my training, were really about reconstruction and dealing with very complicated facial skin cancers. When I first started my practice at a special interest in treating patients who were HIV positive, that had lost some of the facial fat in their cheeks due to HIV meds. So there’s this condition that occurs it’s called facial lipo atrophy or lipo dystrophy, where the HIV medications actually reposition. fat in your body so you’ll lose fat in your cheeks, in your temples. It’s called facial wasting. And so the face starts to concave and sort of look skeletonized. And fat gets deposited in other weird areas. So for a period of time, I was treating complicated skin cancers on HIV positive men. When I was working in West Hollywood, we were removing fat in certain areas and putting it back in areas where it was lost. We’re using other injectable treatments that stimulated collagen and helped to rebuild those areas. And so for a period of time, I was doing a lot more cosmetic treatments and then I got really a They’ve sort of moved by this idea of bringing somebody back to themselves. This is very different than cosmetic enhancement. So there’s enhancing, which is like making your lips bigger and making your cheeks bigger, and you know, all of that type of work, which I, which was never for me, and then the idea of reconstruction or, you know, sort of transforming somebody who had lost what they had back to themselves again, that was the whole idea. And this is very much a part of my philosophy. Today, when I work with reconstructive patients with skin cancer, the goal is to keep them looking like themselves. A large portion of my practice is still cosmetic, I still do injectables, and Botox and lasers and stuff like that. But the idea is to get you to look like yourself. And that’s really the philosophy of Eighth Day. So just to explain the name eighth day, I never wanted to name the products, you know, Dr. T’s magic sauce, or whatever Dr. Knock was cream. It’s really about a philosophy that when you use high powered scientific skincare products, you can go easy on the cosmetic treatments and not go crazy with fillers and start distorting who you look like and who you are to begin with. The idea is to look like yourself. And Eighth Day is actually an ancient term. It’s about, you know, time is measured in seven days, eight days, the idea of eternity. And so we say that, we believe beauty is eternal beauty is everlasting. And it can happen at any age, provided that you maintain who you are. And my philosophy is that when you have beautiful skin, when you focus on skin, skin health, and you’re not chasing down every single wrinkle in your face, and trying to inject here and chase that wrinkle and freeze this muscle. That’s how you will be able to still maintain who you are, and achieve beauty at any age. So that’s what Eighth Day means. Nothing happens to your skin in eight days. It’s the philosophy of eternal beauty. That’s what Eighth Day means.

Kara Goldin 7:20
I love it. So what was your first product that you actually developed,

Dr. Antony Nakhla 7:24
we developed when I say we I mean myself and sort of the team of r&d and chemists that I had retained to do the work. I developed the regenerative serum first. And that was a serum that sort of replaced all the serums that were in people’s cabinets, my patient used to bring in these bags, like Ziploc bags of products. And it would be like vitamin C serum via you know, hyaluronic serum peptides see like all of these serums. And I would look at them. And I’d look at the ingredient lists. And I would say why is there only like 10 ingredients in this one serum. And it’s being sold for two $300. And I thought to myself, not only were so there was a few problems with the serums that people were buying. First, if that active ingredient on the front of the bottle, said vitamin C, and on the back of the bottle, it was like the 27th ingredient, you’re barely getting even just vitamin C, that was one problem. The second problem is you don’t need four or five serums you need all of these actives in one in one step. And it’s really kind of like more of a marketing thing and more of a convince you to buy more stuff, like a thing that happens in skincare. And I wanted to change that. And I wanted to give people one solution that was high powered, and that was based on science. And the most remarkable thing about everything we do in it for eighth day is that it’s based on what we call bio identical skincare. I’ll never forget and I’ll explain what that means. I’ll never forget my first time at a trade show, looking at ingredients. And I was walking around looking at some of the booths and everything was like botanical extract, like really beautiful imagery like a half sliced pomegranate, and a glistening papaya and like, you know, fruits and vegetables and berries. And it all was delicious sounding and looking. But it really had no scientific basis. And so I wanted to create something that was based on my work in in reconstruction that was based on bio identical skincare. So ingredients that are biologically identical to what’s already a part of human skin. Because a plant cell or a cell from a vegetable or fruit is very different than a human cell. Uh huh. Totally different, right so There are things present molecules present in our skin cells that are not present in those sexy ingredients that were being touted. And for a very long time, that was sort of the Zeitgeist in skincare. It was, you know, botanical extract something from the bottom of the ocean, something from Amazonian, very only, you know, found in one part of the jungle, it was all like fantastical storytelling and there was no science. So my idea was to bring bioidentical science to mainstream skincare. And these were things that were I was already using, not just me, but my colleagues and I, to heal open wounds. We use things like placental cell membranes, umbilical cord, tissue, chorionic membrane, a lot of gross sounding stuff, with stuff that works because it contains peptides, growth factors, amino acids, and all these ingredients are already present in your in your human skin cells. So that’s the basis of Eighth Day. And then that’s what led me to create my proprietary blend, which we call peptide rich plasma. And that’s a blend of 24 of these ingredients that I sourced that I believe, resemble those ingredients that are actually active on human skin cells, that will stimulate healing and renewal and repair, and all the things that you want your skincare products to do.

Kara Goldin 11:29
So I’ve heard you say that the best skincare is the kind that helps the body do what it already knows how to do, but maybe slow down as you age. So it sounds like that. That’s sort of the goal.

Dr. Antony Nakhla 11:43
That’s exactly right. You know, if so, if you if you have an injury, and it or if a surgeon removes a chunk of skin, from from your face, or from your hand or whatever, and you leave it alone, your body will actually fill that hole back in, it’ll lay down collagen and elastic fibers and sort of rebuild the skin with scar tissue. So that mechanism, that idea that your body, when it’s injured, will heal itself. That’s the whole basis of Eighth Day. We sick we think of aging skin is wounded skin, it’s wounded by time, by the sun by the environment. Your DNA breaks down over time and changes. So the idea is that wounded aging skin is wounded skin. And if you give it back, those ingredients that help to heal a wound, you will help rebuild your college and rebuild the elastic fibers help your body to secrete its own hyaluronic acid. That’s how to think of skincare. It’s not. You know, it’s not just about marketing and about ingredients that sound delicious. Or, you know, like, I always like think of some of my patients that like, not just them, like, you know, really, for generations, there’s this idea of like putting food on your face, right, like an avocado and whatever Mask and I’m gonna blend it up and put it on my face. You know, I think that the new approach to skincare is much more scientific and much more modern. And we understand now that while you can derive some really great extracts from plants and botanical extracts, and use them in skincare, and we do by the way, really the stuff that really changes and transforms your skin are an ingredients that are unique to the human body. And those are what we focus on.

Kara Goldin 13:46
So interesting. So I also was, there seems to be this trend. And we’ve had a few different people on that have talked about this, were moving away from these 12 product systems. And I definitely laughed when I when I was reading your comments about that, because I think it it’s, it’s a hassle not only is expensive, but it’s just a hassle to have all these different bottles and all these different things versus actually just a few products that can actually do an excellent job. So I think the trend of simplifying not only beauty products, but also just life, I think is much more in sync with what consumers want overall.

Dr. Antony Nakhla 14:34
That’s true and provided that that one product that you use to replace 10 other products is loaded with active ingredients. And the way to test that way to look at it yourself is to turn the bottle around and look where the active ingredients sit on the ingredient list. In skincare there’s something called a 1% line, meaning at a certain point Weighing the ingredients listed beyond, like the first, you know, I would say first 10 or first 15 ingredients, everything else that’s at the bottom is present that less than 1%. So it’s kind of like, you know, my wife when she buys dog food, right? Like, she doesn’t buy like beef flavor she buys like she’s really intent on checking the ingredient list. And, and we all do this if we have pets like, like, Where does chicken and beef sit on the ingredient list. If it’s if it’s like corn meal and barley and a bunch of stuff before that you’re not really getting chicken or beef, or the same thing with skincare. And you’re not really getting the magic stuff that’s on the front of the bottle, if it’s not very high up in the ingredient list. So for example, our serum, the proprietary peptide, rich plasma, look for it on the ingredient list, it’s nearly at the it’s, I think it’s like in the top three or four are resurfacing tonic, the lactic acid is number three on the ingredient list. So we’re not just putting like magic pixie dust levels of ingredients. It’s really high powered skincare. And it’s transformative because of that because of how powerful the ingredients and the concentrations are.

Kara Goldin 16:22
So you mentioned the resurfacing tonic. And it’s can be you describe it as a chemical peel in a bottle. It’s amazing on so many levels, I loved it, it did skiing a tiny bit, which I read, somebody was talking about it and said like, that’s a good thing, right? Like it’s it will come down. And it definitely did immediately it was it felt very, very clean, actually. So it was awesome. So what is what’s so special about that one in particular, that’s your newest product, right?

Dr. Antony Nakhla 17:01
It’s our second to newest we had another one that was great after which was the intensive moisturizer. But that product is really special. Because it’s it’s sort of the perfect skin prep for that high powered serum that contains all of those nutrients. And the way to think of the way to think of your skin cells is you know, your skin is constantly exfoliating, it’s sort of micro exfoliating. And it’s it’s constantly turning itself over just like a snake, right? Like a shed one time, and then they’re in their new skin. But we do this thing called micro exfoliation, and even ingredients like I’m sure you’ve heard of retinol and Retin A and all the retina weights like all the prescription retinoids that you can get at your dermatologists office. The way those work those are vitamin A derivatives is they turn over the skin at a rapid rate, right the increase that rate of skin cell turnover. When you use acids, like lactic and glycolic acid, which are found in that resurfacing tonic, you’re basically getting rid of that top layer of skin that’s become useless. And you’re increasing the rate of turnover, you’re making your skin cells renew themselves, and you’re getting down to that fresher, brighter skin. This helps with things like fine lines helps with pigmentation. It helps with skin dullness, you know, like your skin just looks more dull. If it had if that top layer of it’s called stratum corneum, that dead skin cell layers just sitting there. When you remove it, you have brighter skin. And it’s one of those products that we’ve figured out how to balance the pH. Right, like, you know, like working with these acids is very challenging and keeping them stable. But we also have to be careful not to burn somebody or use too little where, you know, nothing happens. And thanks to my network of friends and family and spouses of friends. I’ve I’ve burned a few family members and people in the r&d phase and now we have a product that’s really tolerated by all skin types. And it’s really, I think that’s a hero product.

Kara Goldin 19:22
Yeah, it’s terrific. And so there’s only one, there’s only one type so you haven’t gotten into one for I don’t have sensitive skin versus oily skin. You really believe that, you know, once one size fits all,

Dr. Antony Nakhla 19:38
yes, with the caveat that you know, we tell people to test it on the back of their hands first, you know, like just give it a little test area. See if you tolerate there are those people those patients of mine and elsewhere that are extra sensitive and the product may not be right for them. This is for people who are interested in serious skincare Have you know there is there’s sort of there there are a lot of people that that they prefer sort of a easy does it type of approach and like, that’s not our customer. Okay this is for somebody who wants serious skincare with transformative results. And if you learn how to use this product the right way. You know some people start out using it every other day or once or twice a week and build up to it. My wife when she first started she had really bad melasma she was using this product every other night. And now she uses it twice a day. And she can’t live without it. She makes herself a little you know, travel sizes and pours a little enough in a to go type container. And there are many patients of mine who really can’t live without this product.

Kara Goldin 20:53
Yeah, it’s really really amazing. So what would your daily assuming you get up to a daily routine with all of your products, how would you start and is there anything you would add to it you mentioned retinol products or anything else that you would suggest like what else would you add to it? So you start with

Dr. Antony Nakhla 21:14
you start with the the restorative cleanser. cleanser is everything was thoughtfully put together as part of a regimen so you start with the restorative cleanser, which is a gentle gel cleanser that contains probiotics and some exfoliate of enzymes and helps to just clean the skin from dirt and oil but it doesn’t strip your skin so there’s still you know, like you don’t feel stripped you don’t feel like your skin is completely devoid of oil. And that’s because the next step is the resurfacing tonic which has a good bite to it and will help further exfoliate the skin and cut down the oil. It also helps with pore size. So pore size on the nose and shrinking those pores. So first is the cleanser restorative cleanser, resurfacing tonic and then you do the regenerative serum now your skin is prepped and ready to absorb the high nutrient regenerative serum which is really our hero of all heroes, the one that sold out six or seven times at violet gray and we had a hard time keeping up with that product with the demand for that product. After the serum. We have two options for moisturizer right now we have the reparative moisturizer which is a sort of I would call it a medium to light finish. Not everybody likes a heavy you know high gloss moisturizer. This one is perfect under makeup. And it doesn’t really have a lot of shine to it. It’s got a little glimmer, but it’s not very you know glossy or you know heavy moisturizer then not then. So if you like that type of moisturizer, or you have like you know oily or skin or combination skin that’s what you use. If you have very dry skin and you like a very this is the majority of patients by the way our customers is they prefer the high gloss dewy, very rich moisturizer. That’s the intensive moisturizer. And that one is it comes in a jar is too thick to pump out. So if you can imagine the consistencies one is a pumped moisturizer. The other one is comes with a spoon or a spatula and high gloss do we finish for dry skin for dry weather. That’s the intensive moisturizer. Some people buy both and they use them the reparative which is the lighter in the morning and they use the heavier one at nighttime. And then you can finish if you have any problematic areas around the eyes like if you have crow’s feet or puffy eyelids skin, we have an iron renewal cream. That one contains our proprietary peptide rich plasma but also has an interesting peptide in there that’s actually derived from snake venom. It’s it looks like the molecule it’s a synthetic molecule but it acts like snake venom, which has a little muscle relaxing effect. So snake a snake when it bites you causes calcium channels to be blocked and the muscle gets paralyzed for a sec. We use that same effect it’s little biohack kind of like you know if you get Botox and you want to freeze the muscle, it’s got a little snake venom peptide you use around the eyes. It’s really an amazing product. For people with problematic skin around the eyes. You can only use that around the lips for fine lines around the mouth as well.

Kara Goldin 24:58
Very cool. I have not tried that. One yet, so I definitely need to give that one the rest of your products that were just awesome. So I’m sure that is, as well. So were you always were you a scientist as a kid, were you constantly playing with all these different ingredients or what was sort of your, your background,

Dr. Antony Nakhla 25:18
I was always fascinated by the sciences. And I actually was also, I think more like, artistic and and that’s how I found my specialty you know, like in medicine you have a lot of different pads can be a cardiologist or a OBGYN and whatever, I always found you have a touch of OCD and in a probably in a good and a bad way. And so I found myself to be fascinated by design and by detail. And also, I have a creative streak in me. So it sort of seeped out of my practice and into this other project that became a call my expensive science project, you know, this became an expensive science project, and then eventually turned into a pretty cool little enterprise now and we have some smart, much smarter people on the job that are actually running the brand. And my job is to focus on, you know, the things that I care about, like the packaging being sustainable. This is all refillable. This is made from non virgin plastic. That that’s made from recycled materials. So all the things that I’ve I’m good at my superpowers are the formulations and the detail. And now there are some proper business people that are running the brand and and building it.

Kara Goldin 26:50
That’s terrific. So what is obviously you’re, you’re still seeing patients and really focusing on on skincare and what are your feelings on SPF and and what people should do to avoid, I guess coming to see you, right, so you can I guess you can go see you for cosmetic reasons or to actually get your incredible products but to really avoid having challenges with with skin cancer, which obviously nobody wants to deal with.

Dr. Antony Nakhla 27:24
Yes, skin cancer is on the rise, unfortunately, especially in younger patients. These past few years, we’ve found an incredible amount of melanomas on younger patients, my brother in law just had melanoma, it’s really pretty scary, actually. And I think, you know, as a community in dermatology, we’re thinking of ways to educate people more about doing a self examination, and coming in sooner and taking little biopsies and being extra extra diligent, the first thing I would do is learn how to do a self assessment. And when you look at a mole on your skin, you first want to sort of remember some bait like a basic acronym is that A, B, C, D, E is of melanoma. Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that can kill you. So you want to be able to catch that very early and, and be really diligent about checking yourself. So you might have I run through the ABCD. No, I love it. It’s great. So A stands for asymmetry. And if if I draw a line through my Mole, does it fold on itself? Is it symmetrical? If it’s symmetrical, that’s a good thing. If it’s asymmetrical, you need to be seen. B stands for borders border irregularity. So are the borders nice and smooth, or are they jagged, like sort of like a saw, irregularity is not a good thing, and you need to be seen by a board certified dermatologists. The most important one is C which is color. So we look for multiple colors in the same mole. And the color that’s the worst color is a very dark black color. So most moles are sort of tan and brown in color. If you see any moles that have dark black, or if one stands out in color, like all of your moles are sort of uniform in color. And then you have one that has it’s called color variation. So multiple colors in the same mole. That’s a very bad sign and that needs that needs to be checked. D is diameter. So greater than five millimeters, the way to remember is bigger than a pencil eraser. And then E stands for evolving or a changing mole. So something that looks a little different than it looked or you’ve always had it but it’s starting to change and it’s starting to grow or or develop any of those other features. Then you need to be seen. So a b c, d e, asymmetry, border, color, diameter, evolving or changing. Those are the things to do now with regards to SPF We have two SPF products in our pipeline that are really quite special. And I’m a firm believer in non chemical sunscreen. So non chemical sunscreen are the types of sunscreen. So Chemical sunscreens are the types of sunscreens that your body the sun is absorbed by a sort of one of the chemicals in the sunscreen and it’s reflected off or a chemical reaction occurs, then you have physical sunscreen, which is just something that gets between your skin and the sun. And those are zinc and titanium. I really love zinc. And I think the general consensus is that zinc is the safest is the reason why, you know, there’s, for children under three, or under two, I believe it’s we recommend zinc products and really nothing else, I would say that it’s very hard to formulate with zinc, because it’s causes like a white paste on your skin almost. There are types of zinc, that are micronized, meaning little molecules that ended up getting absorbed into your bloodstream, which is also problematic. So micronized, titanium and micronizing, we’ve developed a version of zinc, regular zinc, that’s blended in a way with some other ingredients that actually causes no white cell, and his really amazing SPF product, including all of our amazing peptides for daily use on the face and neck and chest. That one is in the pipeline. And we hope to have more information about it soon. But we’ve spent a lot of time developing that. Because as you know, one of the barriers to people putting this stuff on is how it looks and how it performs. And totally and getting it feeling and looking beautiful is half the battle if people actually use it.

Kara Goldin 32:01
That’s awesome. Well, thank you for that. And everyone will have all the information in the show notes about the products. It’s available on the website. But it’s also available in stores, Bergdorf, Goodman, Nordstroms, Violet, gray, and many, many others and more to come. I’m sure Harrods was a nother one. But we’ll have all this information. And in the show notes for sure. So and it’s Eighth Day skin.com Dr. T. Thank you so much for coming on.

Dr. Antony Nakhla 32:38
Thanks so much for having me.

Kara Goldin 32:39
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my book on daunted which I share my journey, including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And thanks everyone for listening. Have a great rest of the week, and 2023 and goodbye for now. Before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk about fearless leaders. But achieving big goals isn’t about fearlessness. Successful leaders recognize their fears and decide to deal with them head on in order to move forward. This is where my new book undaunted comes in. This book is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of fear, overcome doubts and live a little undaunted. Order your copy today at undaunted, the book.com and learn how to look your doubts and doubters in the eye and achieve your dreams. For a limited time. You’ll also receive a free case of hint water. Do you have a question for me or want to nominate an innovator to spotlight send me a tweet at Kara Goldin and let me know. And if you liked what you heard, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts. You can also follow along with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Kara Goldin. Thanks for listening

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