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Most of us are aware of serious health ailments, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, stroke, or asthma. These conditions and many other such ailments are considered as “critical illnesses” because they affect several vital body parts at once, including the heart, lungs, skeleton, liver, and brain.
While early diagnosis of these conditions is critical in identifying and determining the best possible course of treatment, there are other, lesser-known diseases, which are difficult to diagnose, primarily because their symptoms may resemble other health ailments.
In case, you choose to neglect any persistent symptoms and pre-emptive health check-ups, it could be days, months or even years before the ailment is diagnosed and treatment starts.
Let us take a look at some of these lesser-known critical illnesses and how you can create a definitive plan of action in preparing against them financially through term insurance.
1. Medullary Cystic Disease
Medullary cystic kidney disease or MCKD is a rare health condition, in which small, fluid-filled sacs (also known as cysts) may form within your kidneys. These cysts may also cause scarring in the tubules of the kidneys. Since your kidney is responsible for filtering and removing toxins from the body through urine, the damage from this rare health condition may lead to malfunctioning of your kidneys and tubules.
Eventually, your body would produce urine that isn’t concentrated enough, meaning that you may experience frequent urination (polyuria), leading to excessive loss of body fluids and vital minerals such as sodium.
2. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
The systemic lupus erythematosus (also known as SLE) is a chronic health ailment that causes inflammation in the connective tissues of your body, including the lining and cartilage of the blood vessels. The signs and symptoms of this rare health condition may vary from one affected individual to another.
SLE is categorised under autoimmune disorders, which may occur when the immune system suffers damage and begins to attack your body's tissues and organs. In the case of advanced cases, the ailment can affect multiple organs and systems at once, including the skin, kidneys, joints, lungs, blood-forming (hematopoietic) system and central nervous system.
3. Aplastic Anaemia
Aplastic Anaemia is another lesser-known health condition, categorised as a critical illness. The condition occurs when your body stops producing an appropriate number of new blood cells. Individuals suffering from Aplastic anaemia may experience excess fatigue, uncontrolled bleeding, and develop a higher risk of infections.
Aplastic anaemia can develop at any age, either suddenly or occurring slowly and worsening over an extended period. A possible course of treatment may include blood transfusions, medications, and possibly a stem cell or bone marrow transplant, which in itself, is highly expensive and you may feel wanting in case you do not have sufficient funds to opt for the treatment.
4. Progressive Supranuclear Palsy
Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (also known as PSP) was first described in the year 1964 by three scientists, who were working on identifying a rare condition, which depicted similar symptoms to Parkinson's disease. PSP is sometimes known as the Steele-Richardson-Olszewski syndrome, after the scientists who published their findings on the rare health ailment.
Progressive supranuclear palsy is essentially a neural (brain) disorder that may affect your body movement, balance while walking and standing, speech, vision, swallowing, mood and behaviour, and thought process.
While the health condition may cause extensive damage to the nerve cells in your brain, the condition worsens with time, causing weakening (palsy) due to damage incurred by the nerve cell clusters known as nuclei (supranuclear), which precisely control the eye movements.
5. Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (also known as CJD) is a rare, degenerative, and often fatal brain disorder, which is categorized under the family of prion diseases or Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs).
While CJD is the most common form of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, there are other, rarer forms of the health condition, including Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease (GSS) and Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI). In the early stages, affected individuals may experience failing memory, lack of coordination, behavioural changes, and visual disturbances. As the illness worsens, patients may show signs of more pronounced mental deterioration and involuntary movements, weakness of extremities, blindness, and coma.
Fighting A Good Fight – The Max Life Way
At Max Life Insurance, we understand the value of your life, and the need to protect yourself and your family against life uncertainties and medical emergencies. Thus, we offer a range of term insurance variants that may be personalized to provide much-needed financial protection.
Under the Accelerated Critical Illness benefit of Max Life Smart Term Plan (UIN: 104N113V04; Non Linked Non Participating Individual Pure Risk Premium Life Insurance Plan), you receive a lump-sum payment of insurance coverage, upon being diagnosed against as many as 40 critical illnesses, including those described above on payment of additional premium.
Source
1. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/systemic-lupus-erythematosus
2. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aplastic-anemia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355015
3. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/progressive-supranuclear-palsy/symptoms-causes/syc-20355659
4. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/Patient-Caregiver-Education/Fact-Sheets/Creutzfeldt-Jakob-Disease-Fact-Sheet
5. https://www.healthline.com/health/medullary-cystic-kidney-disease
6.https://www.maxlifeinsurance.com/content/dam/corporate/Brochures/Term-plans/English/smart-term-plan/smart-term-plan-prospectus.pdf
ARN:- 12012021/Blog18-M20
