Our disability insurance lawyers can assist with your irritable bowel disability claim. Irritable Bowel Syndrome, or IBS, affects millions of Americans. We understand how stressful and tormenting Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) Disability can be. Our legal team is here to help you get the insurance benefits you need.
Cases of IBS vary in severity and can present assorted symptoms. Common problems are chronic and severe diarrhea, constipation, and abdominal pain, cramping and bloating. While there is often significant pain, the condition is not labeled as a life threatening or serious disease.
IBS can be a chronic condition spanning the rest of one’s life. Many times the symptoms can be helped with proper treatment.
It is those sufferers who cannot control the symptoms for which irritable bowel becomes disabling. The condition makes it impossible for them to perform the duties and responsibilities of their job on a continuing, day-to-day basis.
What Causes Irritable Bowel Disability?
The exact cause of IBS is not known. Medical experts hold that miscommunications between a person’s brain and the intestinal tract is a cause. The failed brain-gut signal causes abnormal muscle contractions and spasms, which affect the passage of stool. The end result is severe and frequent diarrhea and/or constipation.
The following physical and mental factors can also influence the onset of IBS:
- Mental health issues such as PTSD, anxiety, depression
- Stress
- Hormonal changes
- Antibiotics and other medications
- Digestive tract infection
- Smoking
- Genetics
People with other disabling conditions such as migraine headaches, chronic fatigue, insomnia and fibromyalgia may be more likely to develop irritable bowel disability.
Diagnosis of Irritable Bowel Disability
Your doctor will base a diagnosis of IBS on your medical history, symptoms, and test data from a physical exam including blood and stool tests. Further diagnostics such as colonoscopy and lower GI x-rays will be called for.
Depending on the severity and symptoms, treatment may include medicines such as antispasmodics and antidepressants, probiotics, as well as stress therapies and diet-related therapies to relieve IBS.
When reviewing your medical record, the insurance company will look for any sign that your IBS does not prohibit you from working. They will pick up on any weakness in your records that they can contest by means of their own in-house examinations, cherry-picking the records in their favor, or simply by downplaying the impact, and even the existence, of your condition.
If you were taking antidepressants to treat the IBS, insurers may try to use that fact against you. They want to classify the condition as a mental disability. This can wipe out a claim for long term disability benefits, because most policies limit benefit payments for mental disability claims to a maximum of 24 months.
The Key to a Successful Irritable Bowel Disability Claim
Documenting all medical evidence, treatment plans, and problems associated with your condition is essential to your IBS disability claim. To defend against unfair or unreasonable disputes by the insurance company, our attorneys will load your record with vital medical and vocational evidence.
We work closely with your doctors and bring in medical specialists and occupational experts to establish comprehensive medical records, lab results and treatment history to substantiate the full extent of your condition.
Where treatment has failed, it must be thoroughly demonstrated that all therapies were conducted as prescribed.
Unable to Work – the Harsh Reality for IBS Suffers
Whether you are considering filing an initial irritable bowel disability claim, or your claim has already been denied, we urge you to contact our law firm. The call is free, and we will evaluate your case and advise you of all your options.
Our lawyers at Mehr Fairbanks Trial Lawyers have extensive knowledge of long term disability insurance law. We can help with group disability claims and individual disability claims and litigation. Please give us a call toll free at 800-249-3731.