Diabetes is very common in the UK. It’s one of those “it’ll never happen to me conditions” but with new research linking diabetes to slow child development, there is even more reason why you should have regular check ups, available with some policies as a benefit of private health insurance. The study by Laval University’s School of Psychology in Canada has found that women who develop diabetes during pregnancy are twice as likely to have a child with language development problems, particularly with vocabulary and grammatical skills. The leading researcher, Ginette Dionne, told science journal ‘Pediatrics’, “As mothers are having their children at a later age and the incidence of obesity in the population is on the rise, the rate of gestational diabetes is clearly increasing.”

There is no better time then to take out a private medical insurance policy, giving you access to in-depth health check ups that could pick up on such a condition. The symptoms of diabetes can often go unmissed and are not thought unusual – for example needing to visit the toilet more regularly and feeling more thirsty. This means that many cases of diabetes are not caught and can develop into a more serious version of the condition. If caught in time, some types can be treated purely by a change in diet, avoiding the use of insulin injections altogether; a thought that is daunting for many people.