Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.

labquiet_amy said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

This answered a question I did not know how to ask. Printing the relevant bit and taking it with me.

Adding the clinical framing, because it changes how the question reads. 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.

PharmacoVig_BOS said:

Worth answering the question that was asked rather than the one behind it.

Can confirm the pattern PharmacoVig_BOS describes. Steady state is the thing most people miss. The terminal half-life is about a week, so every dose step takes four to five weeks to fully express itself. Judging a step at day ten is judging the ascent, not the plateau, and it is the single commonest reason people escalate before they needed to.

Moderator note: reminder that nothing in this thread is medical advice, and that clinical claims need a source.