Life Insurance With Plantar Fasciitis
On a life insurance application, heel pain is close to the least remarkable thing you could declare.
The reason it is worth its own page is the work angle. Plantar fasciitis is slow, it recurs, and it affects precisely the people whose jobs depend on being on their feet all day.
So this page covers both: what we would ask for cover, and why the cover you actually want might be a different one.
The short answer
Plantar fasciitis is heel pain from the thick band of tissue along the sole of the foot, and it is stubborn: it is measured in months rather than weeks. For most people it is a nuisance to declare and nothing more. For somebody who walks or stands for a living it is different, because this is one of the conditions that genuinely stops a postal worker or a retail worker doing their job.
What it is
The plantar fascia is a thick band of tissue running from the heel to the ball of the foot. Plantar fasciitis is pain where it attaches at the heel, classically worst on the first steps in the morning and after sitting.
It is usually managed with rest, stretching, supportive footwear or insoles, and sometimes physiotherapy. Persistent cases are occasionally treated with steroid injection or shockwave therapy. It typically takes months to settle and can come back.
Why it comes up on an application
- It is slow rather than serious, so the useful detail is duration and whether it has recurred rather than severity.
- Steroid injection or shockwave therapy means a clinician was involved beyond a GP, which is worth saying.
- The occupational angle is the real one. If it has ever stopped you working or made you reduce hours, that is a direct question on an application and the answer matters.
- Persistent heel pain is sometimes imaged to exclude a stress fracture or other cause, and any scan counts as an investigation whatever it showed.
What we would ask you
- How long you have had it, and whether it has settled or keeps returning
- What treatment you have had, including any injection or shockwave therapy
- Whether it has ever stopped you working or reduced your hours
- Whether you have had any imaging of the foot
- Whether you are currently off work or working reduced hours because of an accident, injury or illness
- Whether you are waiting on any medical tests, appointments or treatment
- Whether you have been diagnosed with or treated for cancer in the last five years
- Whether a parent, brother or sister was diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or a stroke before 65
- Any medication you take
- Whether you smoke, and your date of birth
The Question Is What You Do For A Living
Plantar fasciitis is a good example of a condition whose importance depends entirely on the person who has it.
For somebody at a desk it is a painful inconvenience managed with better shoes. For a postal worker covering several miles a day on foot, a retail worker on a hard floor for eight hours, or a chef standing a double shift, it is one of the commonest reasons they end up off work. It is slow to settle, and it gets worse the more you are on it, which is the opposite of what a job on your feet allows.
That is why income protection is at the top of the list on this page rather than the bottom. If your earnings depend on your feet, the useful conversation is about protecting the earnings, not about whether heel pain affects a life insurance premium.
Duration Is The Detail, Not Severity
There is no grading scale for this that means anything to an application, so trying to describe how bad it is wastes the space.
What is useful is time. Six weeks that settled with new insoles is a different entry from three years of on and off heel pain with two steroid injections. Both are honest answers to the same question, and the second tells us considerably more.
Add any treatment beyond your own efforts, and any imaging. Persistent heel pain is occasionally scanned to rule out a stress fracture, and a scan is a test whether or not it found anything.
Which cover is relevant
Listed first deliberately. If you stand or walk for a living, this is a condition that realistically takes you off work for weeks, and income protection is the cover that responds to that.
The usual starting point for protection generally, and heel pain is rarely a factor in what is available.
Pays on diagnosis of a listed serious condition, and this is not one. Worth having for the risks it does cover.
Common questions
Does plantar fasciitis affect life insurance?+
It is rarely the interesting part of an application, and what any insurer decides rests on your whole picture anyway. The more useful question for most people with it is whether their income is protected, because this condition does stop people working.
I am on my feet all day for work. What should I be looking at?+
Income protection, ahead of anything else on this page. Plantar fasciitis is slow to settle and worsens with time on your feet, which makes it a realistic reason for weeks off work if your job depends on standing or walking.
Do I declare it if it has gone?+
Answer what you are asked. If a question covers conditions you have had, then yes, with roughly when it started and when it settled. Dates do most of the work for a condition that resolved.
I had a steroid injection. Does that count as treatment?+
Yes, and it is worth saying. An injection means a clinician was involved beyond self-management, and a question about treatment or specialists is asking about exactly that.
Can I get income protection if I already have it?+
It is worth asking rather than assuming. Honestly, anything already in your medical records will be asked about and may affect the terms offered, and acceptance is the insurer's decision. Applying before a recurring problem becomes a long history is a better position.
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this one.