Ah hah! As a science nerd you may appreciate this. As a psychologist, I've been fascinated to see the growth of psychoneuroimmunology and epigenetics.

So it turns out that on the one hand we have genetic **tendencies** and on the other hand, our attitudes and beliefs can play at least some role in determining whether or not a particular set of genes is triggered.

I offer you the slimmest anecdotal evidence. I love cilantro and have used it as garnish in salads and also to incorporate in cooking vegetables.

June, my mother-in-law, insisted that she could never eat anything with cilantro because it quite literally made her physically ill (sensitive stomach).

So one day (we had a very good relationship, don't worry) i mixed in a good deal of cilantro in a large salad. June commented afterwards that the salad was particularly good that day. When I told her there was cilantro in it, she absolutely insisted she must have eaten the part of the salad that didn't have cilantro. Since I made a point of mixing it quite well, my guess is that not knowing there was cilantro allowed her to process it in a different way - which had physiological effects!

This is very much like when people with severe depression are cured and later are told it was a placebo, they simply refuse to believe it. Dr. David Burns has a simple way of illustrating how this mistake can be made. If a company produces a placebo pill, "Placebo," and markets it as a new cure-all for depression and gives it to a million people, approximately 40% will be cured - AND they will most likely all INSIST it was the effects of the drug that cured them, not their beliefs.