If you've searched the web for private health insurance that covers bulimia then you are probably for looking for trusted UK based health insurance providers that will cover bulimia.
Our advice when looking for private medical insurance that covers bulimia is to speak to a insurance broker. Health insurance is very complex and if you want absolute certainty that bulimia is covered by your policy you should talk with a health insurance broker who can explain which providers will cover this medical condition and which will exclude it.
There are many advantages to using a insurance broker but the biggest by far is that you're using their industry experience at no cost. They are paid by the insurer (Aviva or Bupa etc) rather than by you so it costs you no extra to use their brokering services.
- Do you reside in many different areas? Some will give you a cheaper policy premium than offers. A insurance broker will be able to advise whats best.
- Do you have a hobby that may invalidate your insurance policy? A broker will know this critical information.
- If you are a couple and one of you has claimed on your insurance policy this year would it be cheaper to separate you both onto two different policies?
- You've lean't you're at risk of developing a certain medical condition and want to know which insurer offers the largest amount of cover for it. A broker will know this instantly saving you huge amounts of time and effort.
You can call around every medical insurance provider you can find and ask if they cover bulimia, however this will be a very time consuming process. Each insurer will ask for your medical history because its not normally a simple yes or not if a medical condition is covered or not.
Its much quicker to speak to one medical insurance broker which will know which policy providers on the market cover bulimia and under what conditions they do or don't cover it.
Bulimia Information
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder and mental health condition. People with bulimia are very anxious about their weight and focused on having the ‘right’ body shape. They also spend a lot of time thinking about food.
People with bulimia overeat in a pattern known as ‘binge eating’, meaning they eat a lot of food (or what feels to them like a lot of food) in a short space of time. They then try to avoid digesting the food and gaining weight from it by ‘purging’. There are a number of ways people purge, including making themselves vomit or using laxatives (medication that causes you to poo).
Read more about bulimia symptoms
It’s estimated that bulimia affects around 1.5% of women and 0.5% of men across the course of a lifetime. It’s unusual for bulimia symptoms to develop before puberty, and the most common time for the condition to develop is the teenage years.
Bulimia can be treated using a number of different talking therapies, including guided self-help and cognitive behavioural therapy for eating disorders (CBT-ED).
If you have an eating disorder such as bulimia, the first step is to recognise that you have a problem. Then, you need to visit your GP for a medical check-up and advice on how to get treatment.
If you think someone you know has bulimia nervosa, talk to them and try to persuade them to see their GP.
Read more about treating bulimia
The main symptoms of bulimia are:
In order for an episode of binge eating to be considered a binge, it should have 2 key features. The first is that the amount of food eaten is far more than normal for the situation – for example, many people eat a lot more on Christmas Day than they would on any other day, but this is normal for the situation, so it wouldn’t qualify as a binge.
The second feature is a feeling that the eating is out of control – feeling as if you can’t stop eating. You might feel disconnected – as if you’re watching the binge happen from outside your body.
There may be times when a person eats a relatively small amount of food, but it still feels like a binge because they feel a loss of control.
Binge eating is usually a very quick process and you may feel physically uncomfortable afterwards. When binge eating is a symptom of bulimia, it happens regularly, not just once or twice.
Binge eating episodes are sometimes spontaneous, where you eat anything you can find. They can also be planned, where you make a shopping trip to buy foods specifically to binge on.
People often find eating comforting. Binges can start as a way to cope with difficult emotions, but become increasingly frequent and out of control.