Couldn't wait ... "Soo, placebo"

Right, as I now have somewhere to vent my thoughts, I couldn't wait to talk about this conversation I had last night. On the topic of placebos.

(All names may or may not have been changed to preserve the identity, honour, embarrassment, pride and shame of the individuals involved.)

So, it started when myself, "Sock" and "Kodbert" were in restaurant. (I'm going to shorten his name to Kod already ... It's too long to keep typing :p... )
(I'm also omitting all instances of laughter to prevent spamming the post :p )

*We order some food, blah blah*

Kod: "Can I have the Szechuan chicken please."
*Waitress walks away*
Sock: "Lucky you listen to your doctor and stop eating spicy food when he told you to."
Kod: "Yeah I know."

Sock: "What do you mean, you know? You just ordered the spiciest thing on the menu."
Kod: "what do you mean? I bet there's something in here more spicy. What about raw chillies with chilli sauce."
Me: "Who goes into restaurants and orders that?"
Kod: "Someone, probably."
Me: "That still doesn't make your food any less spicy. Your doctor said not to eat spicy food."
Kod: "Mmm."

Sock: "Kod, you have a hole in your stomach."
Me: "Yeah, what if you burn it right through and everything spills out? You could die!"
(I'm no doctor and have no idea if this is true. But it sounded about right.)
Sock: "Have you taken your medicine at least?"
Kod: "I think it's on my desk."
Me: "We asked if you had taken it, not where it was."
Kod: "I had some before breakfast."
Sock: "How often are you supposed to take it?"
Kod: "Every four hours or so."
Me: "That was like 13 hours ago! Why are you still eating spicy food?"
Kod: "What's the point of coming out if I can't have spicy food? It's just like being dead!"
Sock: "How is that anything like being dead?"
Kod: "Well if I'm dead, I can't eat spicy food. And if I don;t eat spicy food, I'm not eating spicy food. It's the same."
Me: "Yes, exactly the same apart from the actually being dead bit."

Kod: "It's fine. I don't need to take the drugs. If I just tell my body not to be in pain, it won't be."
Me: "Well if you can do that, why did you go to the doctors in the first place?"
Kod: "Well I didn't know if there was anything wrong with me did I? But now I know, I can tell my body not to be bothered."
Sock: "You should probably take the drugs."
Kod: "It's fine. I'll just tell my body that I've taken them. Like a placebo."

Me: "A placebo only works if you don't know it's a placebo. And you actually have to take them. You can't just not take a placebo and pretend you've taken a placebo."

Kod: "Why not? My body doesn't know if I've taken it or not."
Sock: "How can you say your body won't know? You just told us you know you haven't taken them."
Kod: "Yes! I know I haven't taken them, but my body doesn't!"

... I'll pause for a second to take in that last sentence ...

So there you have it. Right from the horses mouth ... If you tell your body you've taken a placebo, but don't tell it it was a placebo, or even if you forget to take the placebo, then everything will be fine.
Or something ...

Okay, I'm off to tell my body I've been in the gym for the last four hours while I cook up some lunch.

Good times, Kod ...