Before new drugs can be approved, they have to undergo placebo-controlled tests, where some patients take the experimental drug while others take lookalike pills with no active ingredient. Neither researchers nor patients know who are given the real drug and who are given the lookalike pill.
Research has shown that a fake treatment can sometimes improve a patient's condition simply because the person believes that it will be helpful. It doesn't work for everybody, but enough people have experienced it for scientists to spend some time studying the effect.
Beliefs and attitudes people hold in the privacy of their minds influence their behaviours. This then controls whether people feel good or bad about themselves and whether or not they succeed or fail on a daily basis.
'When we think we are smart, or stupid, or fat, or thin... we tend to create this very reality. It's just the way the mind works. It is like a very powerful and complex computer that takes in whatever we 'type' - whether it is helpful or harmful,' Ms Norris said.
Quoted from Mind your Body in Straits Times.