Ed Hinerman On Life Insurance

If This Stresses You Out, It’s Probably About You!

We talk all the time about how losing control of one part of your health inevitably has a compounding effect on other areas of your health. Stress, or anxiety, is certainly not an exception to that rule.

In a recent post we talked about how some amount of stress, channeled efficiently, can actually be a good thing. A way to increase efficiency and productivity.

For the fortunate few that can achieve that balance, stress is OK. For the majority though, stress is a physical and psychological drag. Nearly half of Americans say that stress has a negative impact on their personal and professional lives. One third say they are under extreme stress.

Stress has to be dealt with somehow and when managed poorly, it is often the management that causes collateral health issues. People under stress often change their eating habits, gaining weight. We’ve discussed on a number of occasions the domino effect that weight gain, leadning to obesity, can begin if left unchecked.

Other ways that people deal with stress have serious social and physical consequences also. People who smoke, smoke more. People who drink, drink more. People who abuse, abuse more.

It is certainly simpler suggested than done, but there are positive ways to deal with the stress that life deals us on a daily basis.  Healthy behaviors noted to manage stress included 54% listening to music, 52% reading, 50% exercising or walking, 40% spending time with family and friends, and 34% praying.

Bottom line. Just like any strain on the body, life insurance underwriters are most concerned with the domino effect. If stress isn’t relieved somehow, other problems almost always follow.

Add comment October 29th, 2007

Good News For Smokers…..Sort Of!!

I hope in previous posts I have made it abundantly clear that smoking cigarettes and looking for low life insurance rates is an oxymoronic walk in which you can’t get there from here.

I have also gone on a bit about the reasons that life insurance underwriters are as hard as they are on people who smoke.

Recently in a post about prostate cancer I passed on the results of a study that showed that men who smoked were no more likely to get prostate cancer than those who didn’t smoke. But they were substantially more likely to have a higher grade, more aggressive type of prostate cancer, and a higher mortality experience from the cancer.

In an article today, there was good news and bad news for women who smoke. The good news is that unlike prostate cancer, smoking does not seem to increase the probability of a higher stage or grade breast cancer.

The bad news is that smoking does seem to diminish the effectiveness of cancer treatments. There is also a lingering question about the long term effect that smoking may have on a breast cancer tumor. Even though it may not cause the cancer to be a faster growing or more aggressive cancer, will it cause the tumor to be harder to treat or make the possibility of recurrence higher?

Bottom line. From a life insurance standpoint, there really is no upside to smoking. The truth is that a woman who has been successfully treated for a low to moderate stage breast cancer can expect, in the long run, to get better rates than a woman who smokes and has never been sick a day in her life.

Add comment October 29th, 2007