First time ordering compounded - what do I even look for?? — anyone have experience?

SarahChen_PharmD said:

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…

Second this. The detail I would add is minor and it is already implied above.

SarahChen_PharmD said:

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…

Coming at SarahChen_PharmD’s question from a different direction. The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either. Those three things can all be true at once, and most arguments here are two people holding different parts of that.

One concrete data point for the thread. One habit that pays for itself: post the method alongside the number. A figure without its method cannot be checked, and an unchecked figure is how this community accumulates folklore.

Happy to go further on any of that.

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

Was that from a primary source or from a summary of one?

Dr.GutHealth said:

One habit that pays for itself: post the method alongside the number.

This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. Filing an objection on the n=1 problem. Personal experience is genuine evidence about one person and very weak evidence about anybody else, and this thread keeps promoting the first into the second.