Well, it’s been about two weeks since I’ve been using this supplemental nutrition. It’s time for an update.

It’s really hard to do a double-blind experiment on yourself, so I have been proceeding with extreme caution. There’s no doubt that I started feeling better a few days after starting, but that could well have been a placebo effect – after all, I do want this to work for me so I can offer it to you in good conscience. But I decided to wait longer to see if there was anything objective I could see, rather than a mere “I don’t feel exhausted at the end of the day anymore”, nice as that is.

So now I have two things to report. One is that my nails are looking much better. They were very soft and pale for quite a long time after my illness in January (in fact, they were showing a white line typical of albumin deficiency, so I upped my egg intake for a few weeks and didn’t really see much difference at that time). That makes me happy.

More importantly, a nasty patch of eczema I’ve had on my forehead for several months now after an unfortunate encounter with some essential oils (don’t get me started) has vanished. I’ve been using my BlackBox stuff to soothe it and keep it under control, but I could never get it to go away. Now it’s gone.

To be fair, we’ve gone from nasty freezing weather to lovely, sunny, warm days in the blink of an eye (Manitoba doesn’t waste much time on spring), so that may have had something to do with it.

Most importantly of all, despite indulging in blintzes and cheesecake in honour of Shavu’ot this week, things seem to be calming down in other inflamed regions of my body. I got a prednisone prescription from my doc last time I saw him, because I felt it was time to play whack-a-mole again. I didn’t fill it, because I didn’t want to confuse the effects of the shake with those of the steroid – but I figured if the shake didn’t do anything for me, I could always fill the prescription anyway. Now I’m not going to, at least not any time soon.

So what’s in this shake? I can’t speak to the other ones in the lineup, because I got the kosher one. But here are its ingredients.

It’s a bit high carb, but it’s got a respectable amount of fat and cholesterol as well. It obviously contains dairy, and it does contain soy lecithin, which is perhaps a strike against it, but I eat soy anyway. My main issue with it, of course, is that I’ve always been Real Food Girl, and maybe if my digestion really improves, I won’t need it anymore. On the other hand, I don’t see myself being able to obtain kosher grassfed liver anytime soon, alas.

So that’s what is going on chez moi right now. I haven’t signed up for this company yet, but it looks like I may, at least based on my current results.

What would you do?