sarah_TO 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…

Second this.

sarah_TO 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…

Coming at sarah_TO’s question from a different direction. 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.

That is the short version; the long version is somebody else's post.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. Worth stating the units and the reference range whenever you post a number here. A large fraction of the apparent disagreement in these threads is two people using different units and both being right.

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

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

Reporting back.

Resolved, and the thing that resolved it was the least interesting suggestion in the thread. Writing that down for the next person who wants the interesting answer.