National Obesity Awareness Week runs from 13th to 20th Jan 2021. Its purpose is to raise awareness of how obesity affects our health and how we can improve the nation’s collective wellbeing.
Obesity is a well-known risk factor for Life underwriters to take into account when pricing individuals with pre-existing medical conditions. Inquiries to Pulse for Life Cover for Obesity are frequently related to Diabetes, High Blood Pressure and Strokes and examples of benefits and premiums can be found by clicking the links.
The National Press and media generally are full of information on the risks associated with Obesity and it is also well known that there is a risk connection between Obesity and COVID-19. Why should this be so? The BMJ article below makes interesting reading;
Why is obesity a risk factor for severe covid-19?
In July Public Health England estimated that having a BMI of 35 to 40 could increase a person’s chances of dying from covid-19 by 40%, while a BMI greater than 40 could increase the risk by 90%.1 But why is this? Stephen O’Rahilly, director of the Medical Research Council’s Metabolic Diseases Unit at the University of Cambridge, also speaking at the briefing, said, “Two things happen when obesity occurs: the amount of fat increases, but also you put fat in the wrong places. You put it in the liver and in skeletal muscle. And that disturbs metabolism. The key disturbance is that you get very high levels of insulin in the blood.”
This disturbance is associated with a range of abnormalities, including increases in inflammatory cytokines and a reduction of a molecule called adiponectin that directly protects the lungs, he says.
It’s also possible that fat increases in the lung itself, which may disturb how the lung handles the virus, he adds. “The simple stuff you read about—big chest, big bellies, et cetera—is all grossly oversimplistic. What is really going on is metabolic, and we know that because if we look at genetic markers for the metabolic disturbance, they are much more closely related to the bad outcomes than genetic markers for obesity itself,” O’Rahilly says.
Read the full article here.
Underwriters are sensitive to the increased risk associated with Obesity and Covid but when Pulse does provide Life Cover it will include COVID-19.
The following are some of the more recent BMI cases that have gone on risk with us;
October 2020
Female age 28 -BMI 59; £130,000 of LTA life cover
Female age 39 – BMI 47; £125,000 of DTA life cover
November 2020
Female aged 47 – BMI 45; £30,000 of LTA life cover
December 2020
Male age 32 – BMI 44; £211,000 of DTA life cover
Male age 37 – BMI 31; £3,000,000 of LTA life cover
Every case underwritten is done so on a bespoke basis. There is no set tariff and the premiums in the above cases ranged from £45 pcm to £269 pcm.
We cannot provide Cover in every case that comes to us and it certainly becomes more challenging when there are multiple conditions involved in addition to obesity. However, it is always worth contacting our team on 01280 841 430 or [email protected].