Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. The mechanism and the magnitude are separate questions. Agreeing that something happens says nothing about whether it happens enough to act on.

labquiet_amy said:

If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The useful move here is to separate what is established from what is widely repeated. Those two sets overlap less than the confident tone of most write-ups suggests, and the second set is where nearly all the disagreement on this board comes from.

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 would you tell the difference between that and the alternative explanation?

Moderator note: leaving this open. It is being argued well and the disagreement is the useful part. No action needed from anybody.