What if you knew that people with Type II diabetes are at a higher risk than others for developing Alzheimer’s? Would you want to find out more about how to keep Alzheimer’s from your door—especially if you’re a diabetic?

These questions became meaningful for me after I read the following on the Mayo Clinic’s website: “Diabetes and Alzheimer's disease are connected in ways that still aren't completely understood. While not all research confirms the connection, many studies indicate that people with diabetes — especially Type II Diabetes — are at higher risk of eventually developing Alzheimer's disease. (www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes-and-alzheimers/AZ0...)

As a healing practitioner, I help people examine the emotional links that are often missing in standard healing regimens. I’ve discovered fresh insight into the connection between Type II Diabetes and Alzheimer’s that I’m eager to share here. It’s part of the “missing piece”  I’m passionate about in my healing work.

Psychological Meaning of Type II Diabetes

According to Dr. Michael J. Lincoln, author of Messages of the Body, the psychological meaning of Type II Diabetes relates to love starvation. He wrote that diabetics “have a desperate longing to belong, yet they are intensely emotionally insulated. They experience much social isolation, with a self-sustaining self-nurturance pattern. They were continuously blamed in an “If
it weren’t for you…!” pattern. They ended up believing that they don’t deserve any better so they withdraw into themselves and away from social/emotional involvement on any close o vulnerable level. They turn to self-maintain love substitutes such as carbohydrates, sugars and pasta and/or their body becomes insulin-resistant.”¹

For those who have Type II Diabetes, either their bodies don’t produce enough insulin or their cells ignore the insulin. Yet insulin is necessary for the body to use glucose for energy. By taking sugar from the blood into the cells, it fuels the whole body. Regarding pancreas problems, Dr. Lincoln states that they stem from individuals “not believing they deserve love. Feeling guilt and a lack of value, life has lost its sweetness. “2 This lack of sweetness and a deep longing for “what might have been” may cause the pancreas to malfunction.

The word insulin comes from the Latin word insula meaning “island.” This refers to the “Islets of Langerhans,” which are the clusters of cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. These cells sit in groups that Langerhans likened to little islands in the pancreas.

Dr. Lincoln suggests that individuals with diabetes are “islands unto themselves”— that is, “from birth they learn to fend for themselves. Basically, they feel they have to rear themselves.”3 Therefore, they may not be able to find nurturance, relevance, or validation from outside sources. This process is likely to be traumatic, thus reinforcing a probable belief that “there’s no sweetness in life.”

Let’s examine this connection between the physical and emotional. Food that’s eaten breaks down into glucose or sugar and enters the bloodstream. Insulin helps glucose move from the blood into the body’s cells. Indeed, insulin and glucose work together so the cells can make energy from food. If individuals harbor the belief that they have to fend for themselves—they
feel alone and have no help—then it sets up the mindset of “no help available” and may interfere with the insulin helping the glucose do its job.

The constant repetition of this internal message—“there is no help so I have to fend for myself, I am alone on my own”—may shape diabetics’ ability to regulate insulin and their external experiences.

Psychological Meaning of Alzheimer’s Disease

Similarly, let’s look at the psychological meaning of Alzheimer’s disease. In his book Messages from the Body, Dr. Lincoln called Alzheimer’s a form of succumbing to the confusion some people feel about what their lives have been or have become. Those who have this disease may have felt demoralized by having their competence and confidence undermined in childhood. There is a resulting distrust and disgust with the Universe and they feel angry, helpless and hopeless.

This point is also reflected in Louise Hay’s book, Heal Your Body, The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them. She wrote that Alzheimer’s is\ a refusal to deal with the world as it is, hopelessness, helplessness, and anger.5

Individuals who have brain problems often indicate a fight going on between personal goals and the person’s divine intent. They’ve learned to meet all of their own needs because no one else in their families would, thus setting up a feeling of fending for themselves and perhaps causing them to distrust the universe.

Those at the end stage of Alzheimer’s disease appear to be in their own “private world”; they can’t let themselves out or let others in. This is significant considering “it is the power of being with others that shapes our brains.”6 as Louis Cozilino wrote in The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain. He also pointed out that neurons by their nature are social; they shun isolation and depend on their neighbors for survival. “If they aren’t sending and receiving messages from other neurons on a constant basis, they literally shrink and die.”7

So if our neurons are social, shun isolation, and depend on neighbors for survival or they’ll shrink and die—is that a metaphor for how people can “shrink and die” without strong connections? Now consider that 75 percent of daily glucose consumption occurs in the brain where its job is to boost cognitive performance. As the brain transmits glucose throughout the body, subconscious thoughts in the brain may guide how the glucose gets distributed. They may also guide the connections to thoughts and feelings—and whatever manifests in the body.

Psychological Aspects of Diabetes II and Alzheimer’s Side by Side

Let’s summarize these points in a chart form.

What Can Be Done?

Over the years, I devised a technique called the MO (Modus Operandi) Technique that helps people release the negative emotions out of the subconscious mind. It instills positive emotions into the super conscious mind and reprograms the conscious mind with affirmations.

Using the MO Technique, diabetics who resonate with the psychological meaning of Diabetes II would—

• Accept that help is available and that others would love to help them.
• Learn how to feel close to others and learn to be vulnerable.
• Find ways to enjoy the sweetness in life.
• Believe that they do belong.
• Understand what their “deep longing” is and try to attain it.
• Become the energy of love and attract more of it into their lives.
• Know that they deserve everything they want, need, and desire.

Do you see how diabetics who gain these attributes may also reflect the psychological meaning of Alzheimer’s? However, by applying the MO Technique, they can strive to have the life they longed for—one of feeling connected and valued, and of knowing they’re not alone.

Yes, help is available. It’s time to enjoy the sweetness in life!

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Maureen Minnehan Jones is a registered nurse, holistic healer, speaker and author of Wisdom to Wellness: Healing Your Emotional Sufferings So The Physical Healing Can Follow to be released March 25, 2011 by O-Books—an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd. Her program and book explain how and why all disease is sparked in the body and describes her “Modus Operandi (MO) Technique”. This is a powerful tool for reprogramming the subconscious, superconscious, and conscious mind for lasting change.

1 Lincoln, Michael J., Ph.D. Messages from the Body: Their Psychological Meaning. Talking Hearts.rev. 2008, p.171.

2 Lincoln, Michael J. Ph.D. Messages from the Body. Their Psychological Meaning. Talking Hearts.rev. 2008, p. 416-417.

3 Lincoln,Michael J., Ph.D. Messages from the Body: Their Psychological Meaning. Talking Hearts. Rev 2008,. p. 170-171.

4  Lincoln, Michael J., Ph.D. Messages from the Body: Their Psychological Meaning. Talking Hearts, rev. 2006, p. 49.

5 Hay, Louise L. Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them. Hay House: Calif., 1982, p.12.

6 Cozolino, Louis. The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2006. p.9.

7 Cozolino, Louis. The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2006. p.39.