Monday Monday

Can focused thought heal?  If you happened to read or see the Dan Brown book/movie THE LOST SYMBOL, one of the characters in the book is conducting experiments in which she endeavors to weigh thought.  Crazy, but what if thoughts have some slight mass and can aggregate and cause something?

Too much holiday cheer for you?  Read about the NOCEBO effect.  If it works in reverse, shouldn't it work in drive?

I am hoping to hear from anyone regarding healers who are alive and practicing today.   There is a healer in Brazil named John of God.  He has an internet presence so he can be googled.  As far as I know, his services are free of charge.

The Ten Talents Cookbook is a treasure

Trying to find a cookbook that speaks to me is a Sysifisican task.  Perhaps that's why I married a chef.  El Exigente has been baking and cooking now for almost 70 years.  He is a hard act to follow;  followed by El Exigente, Junior, who IS following in his papa's footsteps, becoming an even harder act to follow!
Therefore, it behooved me to move into the household baking-cooking tasks.  I'm NO natural cook.  I have searched and finally found a cookbook I can appreciate.  The Ten Talents is an old cookbook.  It's so old it gives you Rules for Eating.  But, their rules (though outdated) make sense to me.

The NOCEBO effect

Some friends encountered the kind of doctor we all call Dr DOOM.  They googled 'nocebo effect' and did some reading.
NY Times article said this

“…the range of possible nocebo responses stretches far beyond stomachache (in extreme cases, ailing patients who are mistakenly informed that they have only a few months to live will die within their given time frame, even though postmortem investigations show that there was no physiological explanation for early death)”

And this:

“*In the Framingham Heart Study, women who believed they are prone to heart disease were nearly four times as likely to die as women with similar risk factors who didn't believe. (Voelker, Rebecca. "Nocebos Contribute to a Host of Ills." Journal of the American Medical Association 275 no. 5 (1996): 345-47.”

What do you think about this?  

Can prayer heal?

Have you heard of a healer in Brazil called John of God?