Dr.DermMIA said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

Can confirm. Same sequence, different timescale. Posting only so the count is not one.

Dr.DermMIA said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

There is a second half to this that has not been said yet. Most of what circulates confidently in this community traces back to one summary of one study, and the qualifier was dropped somewhere in the third retelling.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine. Half the figures circulating in this community trace back to a secondary summary that dropped a qualifier.

A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:

How long did you give it before you decided it was working?

Reporting back.

Update: approved on the third attempt after a peer-to-peer. Nothing about my case changed; only who was doing the talking.