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Number needed to treat as a habit of mind

Started 8 April 2026 · 15 replies · 98 hearts · read 1.9k times

BeaDublin, IE · 8 April 2026
3 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Number needed to treat as a habit of mind

Putting this here because I do not want to be sold anything, I want to know what is actually established.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this was, and how long it went on for.

Here is where I am. The medication side has been more or less as described, and the part nobody prepared me for is everything around it: what to say to people, how to plan a week, and how to tell the difference between a thing to endure and a thing to raise.

Sorry for the length. If anyone has been here, I would very much like to hear it.

33

PetuaKampala, UG
#1

Coming back to this a fortnight later to say it settled. Leaving the update because I hate reading threads that stop.

6

TiborBratislava, SK
#2

What the opening post described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I am the person who had the frightening version of this. I went in, it was investigated, and it was not what anyone feared. Going in is the whole of my advice.

7

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK
#3

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology.

15

StellanMalmö, SE
#4

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

6

AbelAddis Ababa, ET
#5

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

7me too 9

DoraUtrecht, NL
#6

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

4

PerrineStrasbourg, FR
#7

the reply above said something I want to sit with for a second.

It got worse before it got better for me, which I wish someone had said. About ten days of worse.

5

TildaCambridge, UK
#8

For what it is worth, the trial data on this is thinner than the confidence of the internet would suggest. Worth knowing when you read the posts.

5

NilsUppsala, SE
#9

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

7

TheaBergen, NO
#10

Yes to the burping. It is real, it is unbeautiful, and it does settle.

4me too 5

NissaHaifa, IL
#11

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

5

XanBerlin, DE
#12

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

7

BlueStroud, UK
#13

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

8me too 6

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK
#14

I want to slow this down a little. There are four different answers flying about and they are all somebody's real experience, which makes them true and not necessarily relevant to the person who asked.

6

PádraigGalway, IE
#15

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

6