Love Your Liver 2022

Love Your Liver  2022

The liver plays such an important role in the body, having over 500 jobs to keep your body functioning. When working as it should, your liver filters toxins from the blood, helps with regulating blood sugar and cholesterol, aids with digestion of food and can help fight infection and diseases. Love Your Liver Month is a campaign run throughout the month of January, hoping to encourage people to take their first steps towards a healthier liver. 

With the festive season having just ended and many people indulging in lots of lovely food and alcohol, January is a good time to start the year fresh.

Liver disease is on the rise in the UK, and there are three major causes, which can all be preventable. These are alcohol consumption, obesity and viral hepatitis. 

Liver Disease

Liver disease is much more common than people think and there are actually a number of different types. The most common types are:

• Alcohol-related liver disease – caused by drinking too much alcohol on a regular basis
• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – caused by being very overweight and there being a build up of fat in the liver
• Hepatitis – a viral infection or drinking too much alcohol
• Haemochromatosis – a gene which can be passed from parents to their children
• Primary biliary cirrhosis – can be caused by an issue with the immune system

It’s quite fortunate that the liver can repair itself when damaged, but only to a certain point, which is why it’s so important to look after it from the get go. A number of causes for liver disease can be prevented, such as alcohol-related liver disease.

What Can I Do?

There are a few easy things that can be done which will support the health of your liver. To make things even simpler, the British Liver Trust has a great page to make a pledge to love your liver. 

Here you can pledge to complete a fitness challenge, as with regular exercise you can maintain a healthy weight which supports your liver. You can pledge to give up alcohol for a month, which can change your relationship with alcohol for a much longer period of time. There is also the option to pledge to eat 5-a-day, ditch processed food and takeaways and cut down on sugary foods. 

Having a balanced diet can provide your body and liver with some essential nutrients that the body needs to function well. Eating a high amount of sugar or processed foods can lead to an increased amount of fat in the liver, and is actually a contributing factor to non-alcohol related fatty liver disease.

Once you have made your pledge, you can share this for all to see, and hopefully encourage others to make one too.

Access To Insurance

Life insurance

The options available to you when applying for life insurance depend on your own, individual circumstances. Life insurance can be available if you have had liver disease but it really does depend on any lasting complications that you have. The insurers will ask a number of questions related to your diagnosis such as what is the cause? What is your latest liver function test reading (LFT)?

For example, if you have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease then you could find that you’re offered life insurance with normal terms (no price increase) permitting that there’s no fibrosis or cirrhosis of the liver. If you have been diagnosed with haemochromatosis, life insurance can be available if your condition is well controlled.

Life insurance can potentially be available if you have hepatitis A or B. Though slightly more difficult, there is also the possibility to obtain life insurance if you have hepatitis C.

If you have a more serious condition such as primary biliary cholangitis, it could be that we have to approach more specialist insurers to source life insurance.

Critical illness cover

Similar to an application for life insurance, the insurer will want to know all the available details of your diagnosis. Critical illness cover can potentially be available with standard rates or possibly a small price increase, if you have a diagnosis of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, again with no fibrosis or cirrhosis of the liver. Haemochromatosis is similar and shouldn’t cause too many concerns.

There can sometimes be struggles finding critical illness cover for a person diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C, or primary biliary cholangitis. There are some policies that you will see that offer what is known as guaranteed acceptance, and you can often have them, but it’s incredibly important to read the small print as it’s highly likely that any claim relating to your hepatitis will be excluded.

Income protection

Income protection can be trickier as the applications are usually looked at a little more strictly. With income protection a general rule to go by is that if you have a medical condition the best case scenario is an exclusion. If you have had hepatitis and are now fully recovered and have been for some time, that will open up more opportunities for income protection.

Case studies

• A woman in her late 20’s came to Cura needing protection for her mortgage. She had been diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease just a few years prior to coming to us, with the cause being identified as obesity. Her liver had some minor inflammation, with her condition being described as reversible. She now has a life insurance policy for 35 years, covering her for just over £280,000 per month with a monthly premium of less than £13.
  
  
• A man in his mid 30s approached Cura needing protection insurance to offer security to his family. He had been diagnosed with Hepatitis B just over 10 years before coming to us, this was well controlled and no medication was needed. We arranged a life insurance policy covering him for just less than £154,000 for 30 years, with a monthly premium of less than £10. We also arranged an additional life and critical illness policy with a monthly premium of close to £25 covering him for £25,000 for 30 years, including children’s critical illness cover for his young family. To maintain his financial security in the event that he was unable to work due to ill health, we put in place an income protection policy. The terms of the policy offered gave him cover at close to £33 per month with a monthly benefit amount of £1,001, until he reached the age of 70.

There’s quite a few specifics to look at when taking out protection insurance, as you need to ensure the policy you take out is suitable for your needs. Using a protection adviser can be very handy, as they should know all of the right questions to ask to make sure your policy will work exactly how you expect it to.