Critical Illness Insurance and Muscular Dystrophy

Many people can suffer from muscle wastage of which is known as Muscular Dystrophy. There are many different types which can affect the various different muscle groups within the body. The muscle tends to deteriorate over a period of time but there is no found reason as to why this occurs.

There has been medical research in to find ways that can either slow down the progression or even stop it from occurring. There are some types this illness which can be genetically inherited of which are Duchenne which would affect the lower limbs of a young boy, the Facio scapulo humeral which tend to affect the muscles in the face and would tend to show signs as a young teenager, and finally limb girdle muscular dystrophy which affects the shoulders of which usually occurs in adulthood.

No matter who is suffering from muscular dystrophy the affected muscles become weak, and so if for example in affect the muscles in the lower limbs then the patient may have trouble walking. To be able to identify the condition in a child who is not yet walking they may waddle and struggle to climb stairs when crawling.

An adult suffering will tend to be in a lot of pain and struggle to do what is considered normal and actions they use to find simple may now be more difficult and find more challenging. The muscles which are affected even though are wasted may look larger in size, of which if a doctor was to carry out some blood tests they would find that the individual would have a higher level of certain enzymes within the body.

Once the condition has been diagnosed then the condition is not going to get any better, once suffered unfortunately it is not an illness which can be cured. The condition is most likely to occur through the generations of a family, as you are more likely to suffer such an illness if your parents have also.

Therefore if you were to suffer then you may want to consider seeking advice from a genetic counsellor to see what the likeliness of passing it onto your children would be. A critical illness cover plan would not typically cover muscular dystrophy however if someone was to suffer paralysis of the limbs of which was irreversible then this would typically be listed as a covered critical illness under most insurance plans.