Dr.CardioMD said:

The distinction that resolves most of these threads is between what is true on average and what is true for one person.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. 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.

Correct me if the detail matters more than I have assumed.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way. Most of the apparent contradictions in these threads dissolve at that step.

Following on from Dr.CardioMD — and this may be the naive question:

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

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Closing the loop. The answer turned out to depend on the detail I had left out of the opening post, which is a lesson about how to ask rather than about the subject.

DoseLogDan said:

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

No disagreement, though the timescale matters more than the mechanism here. Most of what looks like a difference in kind turns out to be a difference in how long somebody waited.