This gives you control and influence. You can avoid those thoughts that harm your health and cultivate those that enhance it. Symptoms are signals. Find out what the signal means, rather than immediately trying to remove it. When you pay attention to what your body is telling you, you are pacing yourself, getting to know deeper levels of yourself.
Doctors prescribe beliefs in the form of placebos.
A placebo is often narrowly defined as 'an inert substance that has its effect by virtue of the patients' expectations, having no direct effect on the the condition for which is prescribed'. But as we shall see, it is hard to separate direct and indirect effects, and a placebo can be a substance, a procedure or a form of words. All that is necessary is that it mobilises the patient's beliefs and thus their immune system. This chapter is about the placebo effect - how beliefs, expectations and trust, in many guises, can heal illness and influence our health and immune system. It is also the most used drug in the history of medicine.