This is an interesting idea but I’m skeptical that this would actually work. There are studies which I don’t have the citations for (they are cited in Richard Wiseman’s “59 Seconds”) which strongly suggest that positive thinking in many forms doesn’t actually work. In particular, having people visualize extreme possibilities of success (e.g. how strong they’ll be after they’ve worked out, or how much better looking they will be when they lose weight, etc.) make people less likely to actually succeed (possibly because they spend more time simply thinking about it rather than actually doing it.). This is not strong evidence but it is suggestive evidence that visualization is not sufficient to do that much. These studies didn’t look at medical issues where placebos are more relevant.
This is an interesting idea but I’m skeptical that this would actually work. There are studies which I don’t have the citations for (they are cited in Richard Wiseman’s “59 Seconds”) which strongly suggest that positive thinking in many forms doesn’t actually work. In particular, having people visualize extreme possibilities of success (e.g. how strong they’ll be after they’ve worked out, or how much better looking they will be when they lose weight, etc.) make people less likely to actually succeed (possibly because they spend more time simply thinking about it rather than actually doing it.). This is not strong evidence but it is suggestive evidence that visualization is not sufficient to do that much. These studies didn’t look at medical issues where placebos are more relevant.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/22/health/la-he-placebo-effect-20101223
The human brain is a weird thing. Also, see the entire body of self-hypnosis literature.