I had a patient once, a kind woman in her mid-forties, starting a new medication for her blood pressure. She came back a month later, really frustrated, saying, “I’m doing everything wrong, Eliza. My numbers are barely moving, but my friend on the same dose is doing great.” She felt like she was failing the medication somehow. That feeling, the one where you’re asking, “What am I doing wrong?” because your experience doesn’t line up with what you’ve read or what your doctor told you to expect; that’s a very common human response.
Especially when we talk about medications or interventions where the published data shows such clear, linear progress. But the thing about clinical trials, as crucial as they are for guiding us, is that they report averages. They enroll a very specific, often carefully selected, group of people. Your actual body, with its unique genetics and life history and concurrent conditions, well, it didn’t get the memo from the double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.
Sometimes, the disconnect isn’t that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s that your body is simply responding differently from the mean. It’s not a failure; it’s just information. Good information, actually, because it tells your doctor something important about your physiology.
My advice, and what I told that patient, was to start writing it all down. Not just the numbers, but the how and the when. How you feel the day after you take it. What time you take it.
Any small side effects you notice, even if they seem unrelated. That kind of careful log; it transforms the conversation with your doctor. It is a slow question, not a fast one, figuring out what works for your body. You are allowed to take up space