"There is no compelling evidence that the mind can create healing simply through will or belief."<p>IIRC Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence cites studies showing that if you swap out a person's medicine with a placebo, their body will actually keep producing the same antibodies or whatever.<p>I think the same book also cites studies showing that how many calories a person's body absorbs depends as much on the taste of the food as it does on the caloric content. So, for example, if you put steak and mashed potatoes in a blender then the person drinking that will gain less weight than they would if they ate the same caloric amount in normal form.<p>What's more, just recently there was an article showing that hotel maids actually start losing weight if you tell them that their jobs count as exercise, even though they weren't actually exercising any more than they were before:<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17792517" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1779251...</a>