“Skin doesn’t age in silos. You have to approach it as a system.”— Lily Shapiro, PharmD — SuperSelf with Pete Ferrari
Covered in this episode
- The CALM framework for skin longevity
- Why dosing matters as much as ingredients
- VERISOL® bioactive collagen peptides
- AstaReal® astaxanthin — the multi-system antioxidant
- Ceramosides™ for lipid barrier repair
- Multi-pathway antioxidant approach
- Rosacea clearing via antioxidant support
- Hair and nail growth as unexpected benefits
- Why biotin has no clinical backing
- Third-party testing and supplement purity
- UV protection from the inside out
- VISIA scan before-and-after results
SuperSelf with Pete Ferrari is a health and wellness podcast focused on cutting through the noise to deliver science-backed insights for peak performance and longevity.
Read Full Transcript
Chapter 1: What Is Skin Longevity — and Why It’s a New Category
Pete We’ve got Lily Shapiro — a pharmacist, former machine learning hedge fund professional, and founder of ATIKA, a science-backed skin nutrition line focused on longevity. Welcome, Lily.
Lily Thank you. I do want to correct one thing — I’m not a machine learning expert. I was on Wall Street for 15 years, and most recently helped run a machine learning hedge fund on the business side.
Pete Help us understand this category — skin longevity.
Lily When I talk about skin longevity, I’m not talking about looking younger in the short term. I’m talking about how well your skin functions over time — how well it holds hydration, how strong the barrier is, how stable the collagen is, how evenly it produces pigment, and how it recovers from stress. Most of the industry focuses on visible outcomes: glow, smoothness, that little wrinkle. But those are downstream. Skin longevity is upstream — it’s the biology that determines whether those results are even possible and whether they last. I’m 46, and I went to scan my skin with a VISIA scan. It came back as 36. Sun protection has been a huge piece of that — but so has internal support, consistently, for years.
Chapter 2: The CALM Framework
Pete Help us understand the framework.
Lily I was on Wall Street, hadn’t practiced pharmacy since 2008, moved to San Diego during COVID. The biggest culture shock wasn’t Manhattan to golf course. It was the amount of sunlight. I’m talking about driving in my Tesla 10 minutes to pick up my son from school, 15 minutes to Whole Foods, 20 minutes to the workout studio. Those little clips add up. Even on a cloudy day, UV rays penetrate clouds and glass.
Lily I started really thinking: what is actually driving skin aging at a deeper level? The acronym I developed is CALM. C stands for Collagen integrity — the scaffolding. A is Antioxidant balance. We’re all in front of screens, exposed to pollution, UV light — all of it produces oxidative stress. To protect your collagen from that, your antioxidant system has to be in balance. L is Lipid barrier. M is Mitochondrial function — for collagen to form, your cells need energy. I include niacinamide at 500 mg for that cellular energy piece. Everything works as a system, not just one input.
Chapter 3: Dosing — Why More Is Not Always Better
Pete We’ve been conditioned to chase the highest percentage of everything. Help us understand good collagen versus bad collagen.
Lily Chasing more is not always better. If you mega-dose an antioxidant, it can actually backfire — blunting your body’s ability to respond to oxidative stress and for that oxidative stress to serve as a signal for other processes. Dosing matters as much as the ingredient. It goes both ways: underdose and nothing happens, overdose and you can cause harm. A lot of products pad their labels — 90 ingredients in a small scoop. My analogy: if you run a marathon and I meet you at the finish line and offer you one sip of water — technically it’s water. But is it going to do anything? No.
Chapter 4: VERISOL® Bioactive Collagen vs. Generic
Lily The collagen I use is VERISOL® — a trademarked ingredient from Germany, from a company called Gelita. Generic collagen is just raw building blocks — amino acids — and you’re hoping some of them become new collagen. There’s no specific mechanism for that. Bioactive collagen peptides are specific sequences of amino acids — di- and tripeptides — that signal to fibroblasts in your skin to make more collagen. When fibroblasts detect those sequences in the blood, they interpret it as: we lost collagen, we need to make more. That’s a completely different mechanism from throwing protein at your body and hoping something sticks. That’s why I use 2.5 grams, not 20 grams.
Chapter 5: AstaReal® Astaxanthin — The Multi-System Antioxidant
Pete Tell us about the trademarked ingredients.
Lily The first is VERISOL® collagen. The second is astaxanthin. It’s an antioxidant derived from algae — bright orange, which is actually where ATIKA gets its color. It embeds into the cell membrane and can work on different layers of the cell simultaneously, which is quite unique. There’s a growing body of literature for skin, internal UV protection, cognition, cardiovascular health, muscle health. If you asked me: if you could take only one supplement, what would it be? It would be a toss-up between fish oil and astaxanthin. There’s a natural form from algae, and a synthetic form. The synthetic doesn’t have the same benefit profile. I use AstaReal® — grown in Washington State, the most clinically studied astaxanthin for human health — at four milligrams, the studied dose.
Lily The third trademarked ingredient is Ceramosides™ from France. The lipid barrier is about 50% ceramides. When you take ceramides orally, you replenish that barrier and heal it. Within two to three weeks, people are feeling much more hydrated. Same ingredient also shows strong hair benefits — which is why I’m getting so much unexpected hair feedback. The fourth is Red Orange Complex® from Sicily — a blend of citrus varieties with strong data on UV protection, elasticity, and skin tone.
Chapter 6: What to Expect — Rosacea, Hair, Nails, and Timelines
Pete What should someone expect — three weeks in, a month in?
Lily I guide people to 90 days because that’s a safe amount of time for these things to actually work. Having said that, people see results within the first month. I have a friend, 52, who had rosacea his whole life. He said the redness cleared up within two and a half weeks — for the first time in his life, he has even, clear skin. Mechanistically it makes sense: 10 antioxidants are preventing the inflammatory process by combating oxidative stress. Not one antioxidant — a whole system. Increased hydration from the ceramides — you’ll feel that within the first jar. Wrinkle improvement: for me, 12 weeks to see a nine-point improvement in periorbital wrinkles. Then nails — people report they’re growing faster and not chipping. Hair — reduced shedding, new growth. And one gentleman asked me if the product helps with hangovers. I thought about it — mechanistically, yes. The antioxidant load is doing real work on what alcohol puts your body through.
Chapter 7: Skin as a Signal — Why It Shows Stress First
Lily If you’re stressed, nutrient-deficient, or not sleeping well — the first place that shows up is your skin. Because skin is a low-priority organ. Your body takes care of your heart, your brain, your liver before it pays attention to your skin. So when we get dryness, irritation, or a breakout, that’s our body communicating with us: something is off internally. Skin doesn’t age in silos. You have to approach it as a system.
Lily We haven’t done meaningful paid advertising and sales have grown entirely through word of mouth. People saying to their friends: I’m taking this and it’s gold. It’s just a much more thoughtful, no-BS approach.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube Music.