Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. The distinction that resolves most of these threads is between what is true on average and what is true for one person. Both are real; they answer different questions and get quoted as if they were the same one.

Dr.GutHealth said:

Practical: whatever you change, write down the date and the reason.

Coming at Dr.GutHealth’s question from a different direction. Read four things before the headline number. The population, because trial populations are selected and supported in ways that real cohorts are not. The comparator, because "better than placebo" and "better than the current standard" are different claims and get reported identically. The primary endpoint as pre-registered, because a secondary endpoint promoted after the fact is a hypothesis rather than a finding. And the completion rate, because a large effect in the half of participants who finished is a different result from a large effect in everybody enrolled.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a trend.

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

How to read a result like this without either dismissing it or over-reading it, since the summaries all read like press releases?

Moderator note: a couple of off-topic posts removed. Report rather than reply if it drifts again.