Life insurance: the benefits of healthy lifestyle

Living a healthy lifestyle into old age can extend your innings by up to six years and helps you to achieve the best life insurance, research has shown.
Until now it has not been clear whether factors such as being overweight, smoking and excessive drinking make a difference to people aged 75 or more.
The 18-year Swedish study of almost 2,000 older individuals indicates that it does.
Scientists found that long-term healthy living can add five years to a woman's life and six years to a man's.
Researchers recorded data on age, sex, occupation, education, lifestyle behaviours, social networks and leisure activities.
During the follow-up period, 92 per cent of the participants died and half lived longer than 90 years.
Survivors were more likely to be women and highly educated, and to have healthy lifestyles and better social networks.
Smokers died on average one year earlier than non-smokers. But former smokers lived as long as those who never smoked.
Physical activity was strongly associated with survival, and participants who regularly swam, walked or visited the gym were on average two years older at death than those who did not.
Combining the figures for men and women, people with a "low-risk" lifestyle profile survived 5.4 years longer than people categorised as "high risk".
"Low risk" meant having a healthy lifestyle, participating in at least one leisure activity and having a good circle of friends, said the researchers.
The scientists, led by Debora Rizzuto, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "The associations between leisure activity, not smoking, and increased survival still existed in those aged 75 years or more, with women's lives prolonged by five years and men's by six years which is a guarantee for low cost life insurance"

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Life insurance: the link between work stress and heart disease

Scientists found that people in stressful jobs are 23 per cent more likely to experience an event linked to heart disease than less stressed individuals.
They came to the conclusion after analysing data on almost 200,000 people from seven European countries.
"Our findings indicate that job strain is associated with a small but consistent increased risk of experiencing a first coronary heart disease event, such as a heart attack," said study leader Professor Mika Kivimaki, from University College London.
The researchers defined a stressful job as one involving high workload coupled with little freedom to make decisions.
All the men and women taking part completed questionnaires about their jobs, workload, deadlines and freedom to make decisions. None had suffered a heart attack before providing the details.
Over an average follow-up period of 7.5 years, researchers recorded a total of 2,356 cases of heart disease events. These included hospital admissions due to heart attacks and deaths from heart disease.
The greater risk reported for people in stressful jobs remained after taking into account factors such as lifestyle, age, gender and socio-economic background,So we have to decrease the stress of work as possible as we can for best life insurance.

 

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Life insurance: alcohol-related causes and death is higher in men

Men in the UK are twice as likely to die from alcohol-related causes, such as excessive consumption and chronic liver damage, than women, official figures show.
The number of male deaths per 100,000 people stood at 17.2 in 2011.
This compared with 8.3 deaths per 100,000 women, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Meanwhile, women in Wales are more likely to die from an alcohol-related cause than women in England the data shows - 9.5 deaths per 100,000 people compared with 7.6 in England.

Women in routine jobs such as cleaners and sewing machinists were found to be almost six times more likely to die from an alcohol-related disease than women in professional jobs such as doctors and lawyers.
Similarly, men in routine jobs are three-and-a-half times more likely to die from an alcohol-related disease than their counterparts in managerial and professional jobs.

"With the government’s new alcohol strategy we have an opportunity to make the kinds of changes, like introducing minimum unit pricing and tougher licensing regulations, which have the potential to save lives, reduce crime and save the economy millions and help in achieving the best life insurance.

 

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Life insurance: the high percentage of cancer death rate in men

The cancer death rate is a third higher for men than women in the UK, a report has found.
In 2010, a total of 202 men per 100,000 died from cancer compared with 147 per 100,000 women, which works out at a 35 per cent difference between the sexes.
That figure is even higher when gender-specific cancers such as prostate, testicular, ovarian and breast are taken out of the equation, as men were 67 per cent more likely to die from the disease.
Men are almost twice as likely as women to die from liver cancer and almost three times as likely to die from oesophageal cancer, the report produced jointly by Cancer Research UK, the Men's Health Forum and the National Cancer Intelligence Network said.
Men under 65 were also 58 per cent more likely to die from cancers that affect both men and women.
The report - presented at the Men's Health Forum conference in London - suggested the reason that men are more likely to die from cancer could be explained by the fact that more men are diagnosed with types of cancer that are harder to treat, such a cancers of the liver, bladder and oesophagus.
Professor Alan White, chairman of the Men's Health Forum and co-author of the report based at Leeds Metropolitan University, said it is vital that the NHS champions a more proactive approach to preventing more men dying from cancer prematurely.
"The impact cancer has on younger men is often overlooked, but these are men whose life is cut too short by the disease. Our report highlights just how big a problem cancer is and highlights the need to understand the reasons why men are more likely to die of cancer to achieve life insurance," he said.
He added that the Men's Health Forum is campaigning for more research to try to better explain these differences between the sexes as well as more male-focused prevention work so that fewer men are struck down by the disease.
Cancer is the leading cause of death in men in the UK, with around 82,500 losing their life to the disease every year.

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Life insurance: diabetes and sight-saving lifeline

Thousands of diabetes sufferers battling a rare eye disease could be offered a sight-saving lifeline.
This follows a U-turn by the NHS health watchdog, which now recommends that the monthly £742.17-plus-VAT injection be given in specific cases.
The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) watchdog sparked fury last year when it refused to make the Lucentis jab available on the NHS for the treatment of diabetic macular oedema (DMO).
NICE originally said it was too expensive but will now recommend use of the drug if the manufacturer agrees to keep costs down.
DMO affects around 50,000 people with diabetes in the UK. It happens when fluid leaks from tiny blood vessels in the eye to the middle of the retina responsible for colour vision and perception of fine detail. This can result in severe sight problems.
But the watchdog has reversed its decision and recommends Lucentis - already sanctioned for limited use in Scotland - in specific cases in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The drug, also called ranibizumab, is reported to be the first licensed treatment to improve the sight and life quality of DMO sufferers and for achieving life insurance.
The NHS has offered laser treatments, but this only prevents further worsening of vision.
Professor Carole Longson, NICE's director of the centre for health technology evaluation, said fresh analysis showed Lucentis had a 'superior relative effect' if a patient's eye had a central retinal thickness of 400 micrometres - or 0.4mm or 0.0157 inches - or more.
These tests came from the drug's manufacturer itself, Novartis.
The watchdog will be proposing use of Lucentis if it is made cheap enough, whichwould involve manufacturer Novartis providing the injection with a discount.
Prof Longson said NICE was pleased to put forward ranibizumab as a treatment option for certain people with visual impairment caused by DMO in new draft guidelines.
She said: "In November 2011, NICE published guidance which didn't recommend the drug as an effective use of NHS resources. But, following the submission of a revised patient access scheme, we have conducted a rapid review of the original guidance."
Registered stakeholders now have the chance to appeal against the outline recommendations.
NICE has recommended that NHS bodies make interim decisions locally on the funding of specific treatments until the watchdog has issued final guidance.

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Life insurance: stop smoking and live longer

For life insurance women smokers who kick the habit before they reach middle age can add an extra 10 years to their life, according to scientists.
A total of 1.3 million women aged 50 to 65 were studied from 1996 to 2001, and researchers found that those who smoked tripled their chances of dying over nine years compared with non-smokers.
Smoking-related diseases such as lung cancer, chronic lung disease, heart disease or stroke were largely responsible for the increased death rate, with the risk increasing steeply with the quantity of tobacco smoked.
Even light smokers who puffed fewer than 10 cigarettes a day doubled their likelihood of dying.
The authors of the Million Women Study found that it is better for achieving life insurance that people  quit smoking around the age of 30 so that they could avoid 97 per cent of their excess risk of premature death.
"Although the hazards of smoking until age 40 years and then stopping are substantial, the hazards of continuing are 10 times greater."

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Life insurance: how to detect oral cancer

For life insurance, a new genetic test could detect pre-cancerous cells in patients with mouth sores or ulcers.
The first signs of mouth cancer could be uncovered by the gMIDS test, which measures the activity of 16 genes.
About 350 samples of head and neck tissue were taken from 299 patients in Britain and Norway. The test was shown to have a cancer detection rate of up to 94 per cent.
Lesions in the mouth, such as ulcers and sores, are one of the main symptoms of mouth cancer, also known as oral cancer.
These lesions are, however, quite common, and the majority of them are benign, with only 5 per cent to 30 per cent developing into cancer.
The findings of the research can be found in the International Journal of Cancer.
Oral cancer affects more than 6,200 people in Britain annually.
Lead researcher Dr Muy-Teck Teh, from the Institute of Dentistry at Queen Mary, University of London, said: "A sensitive test capable of quantifying a patient's cancer risk is needed to avoid the adoption of a 'wait-and-see' intervention.
"Detecting cancer early, coupled with appropriate treatment is important for life insurance, can significantly improve patient outcomes, reduce mortality, and alleviate long-term public healthcare costs."

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