How Belief May Work and When it Doesn't

I little bit of a disclaimer from last nights blog post: Sometimes, even often, the power of belief isn't enough. For example, I could believe that there was an invisible platform that I'd land on safely if I hopped off a cliff, but merely believing it wouldn't make it true, even if I believed in it with all my heart.

I have no idea how sugar pills work. I don't know how an illness or condition could be cured just by believing you took medicine that could cure it. It seems illogical that taking a pill with no medicinal properties could have any medicinal benefit. Yet, it does work - sometimes. I wonder why.

Maybe some illnesses are partly (mostly? entirely?) mental, meaning that we feel sick because we think we're sick. That makes sense to me. I've heard that confirmation bias can be pretty strong. If a person thinks they're sick, then they may see or feel symptoms of the sickness they think they have. On the flip-side, confirmation bias can fuel sugar pills as well. If you took something you thought was medicine, you may start to see the benefits of the medicine you thought you had taken.

Can belief, either in a false sickness or a fake cure, affect a person's actual physical health? Perhaps. In ways that I don't fully understand, the mind is connected to the body, and the mind and the body affect each other. I wish I were more qualified to talk about this. I wish I knew more about how belief affects health. Maybe I'll do some research later. More likely, I'll just drop the topic and forget about it for now, even though understanding how sugar pills work could help me answer my next question.

How is it that mere belief can affect the real world, like a person's actual state of wellness, at some times and in some ways, but not in others? If sugar pills can cure some illnesses, why can't they cure all of them? I suppose the answer lies somewhere in medical science. But if there needs to be a scientific explanation why a certain drug or treatment works, how is it that sugar pills have any affect on a person at all?

Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers. However, I know that some things are absolutely true, no matter what anyone believes. There is no invisible platform, no matter how strongly I believe it's there. Similarly, God's existence and His power and authority are not dependent on whether or not anyone believes in Him. The scriptures are true, and, by extension, the commandments, promised blessings, and prophecies therein are all true as well, even if nobody believes in them. I also know that some things are absolutely not true, no matter how many people believe in them. Some things don't exist, no matter what a person thinks they've seen or felt, and some things don't work, no matter what a person has seen or experienced or what they think it means. Sometimes, belief just doesn't cut it. I just wish I better understood why, sometimes, it does.