LabKate said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

Agreed on the substance. I would put less weight on the timescale, because two months of anything is not enough to distinguish a trend from a wobble.

LabKate said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

Saving this. It is the first explanation that did not require me to already understand it. Taking it to my next appointment.

From the other side of the consultation, briefly. Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it. The narrow version usually has an answer; the broad version usually does not, and answering the broad one is how a thread stops being useful.

sarah_TO said:

Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it.

Same pattern here, and in the same order. I had assumed I was the exception until I read this.

sarah_TO said:

Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either. Those three things can all be true at once, and most arguments here are two people holding different parts of that.