Missing sleep can increase life insurance rates
Missing sleep can increase life insurance rates
We're not accusing you of snoring, but let's get technical for a moment. When you fall asleep, the soft tissues in your body relax, and sometimes block your airways. Snoring is your body's way of moving soft tissue out of the way. If you have a sleep disorder, the best way to get insurance at an afforable rate is to get treated. "Without proper sleep, the body is under stress and releases hormones to combat that, this increases blood pressure and the body literally goes into fight or flight' mode," says Tom Hinerman, partner for the Hinerman Group in Salida, Colo. For people with chronic-sleep disorders, snoring can sound like a chain-saw symphony. And often, snoring is an indication of a serious sleeping disorder such as sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea causes a person to stop breathing for short periods during sleep. Depending on severity, as the airways close, a person can stop breathing five to 50 times during the night. More often than not, people with sleep apnea are literally gasping for air during the night while their bodies fight to get enough oxygen.
Disrupted sleep is deadlyeven that precious hour lost during daylight savings time can have hazardous consequences. An article published in the September 2009 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology showed that losing an hour of sleep increases the threat of on-the-job injuries for those in hazardous work environments.
"One hour of lost sleep may not seem like a lot. But our findings suggest it could have an impact on people's ability to stay alert on the job," says the article's lead author, Christopher Barnes, Ph.D. and researcher from Michigan State University.
Although sleep disorders like apnea and interrupted sleep are very treatable, unless you show proof of following doctor-recommended treatments, it will lead to increased life insurance rates.
To qualify for standard life insurance rates, Hinerman says, you need to have a sleep study done, and then follow your doctor-recommended treatment schedule closely.
"Depending on the severity some people can use machines like the CPAP [continuous positive airway pressure] machine to correct breathing overnight can help to eliminate symptoms of sleep apnea," said Hinerman.
"If an individual applies for life insurance within the first year after starting CPAP, we would generally offer a policy with a small extra premium," says Robert Pokorski, a medical director for The Hartford. "If he or she has been using CPAP for more than a year, and if all is going well from a medical perspective, in most cases there would be no additional premium required for sleep apnea."
Pokorski also recommends following the general guidelines for the best insurance rates, like maintaining a healthy weight and blood pressure, avoiding smoking, sedatives, and excessive alcohol consumption.
"You may also want to sleep on two or more pillows to make it easier to breath at night," adds Pokorski.
"The final offer to the applicant would represent the combined risk of sleep apnea and other medical conditions that might be present," says Pokorski. "If there are no other medical conditions that affect the overall risk, we would generally offer life insurance at standard, and sometimes, preferred rates."
No matter how mild your symptoms, lying about your condition will not help your rates.
"If a person does not disclose a sleep disorder during the [initial] interview, we will eventually find out, because the interview is followed by a medical evaluation and information about a sleep disorder would show up in their medical history," says Hinerman.
If you lie about a sleeping disorder, you could be rejected for life insurance, or worse, be denied a payout if the condition causes an accident or injury. And that's just not worth losing sleep over.
Sleep disorders affect more than 70 million people in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. While The International Classification of Sleep Disorders, Second Edition documents 81 official sleep disorders, here are seven of the most common.
1. Restless Leg Syndrome or Wittmaack-Ekbom's Syndrome is characterized by a patients inability to stop their legs from moving while sitting or lying down, according to The Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation, an organization concerned with awareness and treatment of the condition. RLS usually disrupts normal sleeping patterns and women are more likely than men to develop the disorder.
2. Narcolepsy- Mayo Clinic defines narcolepsy as a sudden and uncontrollable need to sleep that occurs at times that are outside of a regular sleeping schedule. Unlike those without the disorder who usually enter REM sleep within 30 minutes, a narcoleptic can fall deep into REM sleep within five to 10 minutes. Although it has been known to develop later in life, the disorder usually manifests in people between the ages of 35 and 45. Similar to other sleeping disorders, the primary complaint of those who are not aware they have the disorder is excessive daytime sleepiness or ESD.
3. Sleep Enuresis (Bedwetting)- While bedwetting is fairly common in children, if the condition does not resolve itself, it could indicate the parasomniac condition "sleep enuresis." People suffering this condition have no control over their bowel movements while sleeping. "Abnormal Sleep Architecture and Refractory Nocturnal Enuresis," an article published in the October 2009 edition of The Journal of Urology, found a possible link between limb movement during the night that could possibly lead to cortical arousablitymeaning, the body might be faking itself into being awake, but the brain is not.
4. REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD)- The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine defines RBD as a condition where people act out dramatic or violent dreams during what should be the deepest phase of sleep. While most people are in a state of paralysis during this part of sleep, people suffering RBD can move their limbs. Usually, RBD occurs in men aged 50 and older, but the disorder can also occur in women and in younger people. In a February 2009 study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, researchers found RBD can be managed effectively with drug therapy.
5. Sleepwalking- Like sexsomnia, sleepwalking is a condition where a person can be physically moving about, appear awake and alert, but have no memory of their actions. This disorder is most commonly seen in children, but it can occur in the elderly, and adults. Sleepwalking appears to run in families, and it can be dangerous because the sleepwalker is unaware of his or her surroundings. The National Institutes of Health do not currently recommend any specific treatment for sleepwalking, but recommend making sure to try and keep a sleepwalker safe by removing any hazards, waking them up, or guiding them back to bed, to prevent injury.
6."The Sleeping Beauty Syndrome" or Kleine-Levin Syndrome (KLS) is a rare sleep disorder that involves falling asleep for long periods of time. Unlike narcolepsy, sufferers from KLS will sleep for days, weeks, months and sometimes years without waking up. Symptoms of KLS generally manifest in adolescents. A study conducted by the KLS Foundation found that out of the 186 people who had the disorder, 68 percent were male. There have also been reports of hypersexuality (unusually high or excessive interest in sexual activity), and hyperphagia (over-eating) when someone with KLS awakes. Currently, no cure exists for KLS, but experimental drugs like Provigil are showing increasingly positive results.
7. Sleepsex- You read it correctly. Sleepsex, or, Sexsomnia is a type of parasomnia first recorded in a 2002 and more recently the topic of study in the December 2009 edition of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. People suffering from sexsomnia can make sexual movements, noises, gestures and advances during sleep, without knowing what they are doing. Those suffering from sleepsex have no recollection of their behavior upon waking. Researchers are looking into treatment options for this condition through medication.
Another hazard of losing sleep is the possibility of developing breast cancer.Research by scientists at Japan's Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in 2008, found that women who regularly slept less than six hours a night increased their risk of developing breast cancer by 62 percent when compared to women who slept seven hours or more each night. The eight-year study followed the lifestyle of 24,000 women who were between the ages of 40 and 79. Of the 24,000 women studied, 143 were diagnosed with breast cancer.
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