Ever had an odd feeling in your hand telling you something was peculiar. Maybe you stumbled and you know yourself better than to be that clumsy. What is going on and could this be bigger than it seems. Could it be the worst horror you ever realized? To help you understand these oddities of the body; they all began in your brain. Call it the starting point for millions of important vital communication events. Your brain ordered nerve cells, called motor neurons, to activate muscles in your hand, fingers or legs. In this instance, your muscles responded, and your fingers moved. In a person afflicted with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), there is a break in the chain of communication. The motor neurons degenerate and die. Because of the lack of motor neurons, the brain cannot communicate with the muscles, and voluntary muscle movement is no longer possible. Because the muscles are no longer used, they too begin to degenerate and weaken causing a wide range of disabilities.
ALS progresses rapidly and leads to paralysis. Often, the degenerating muscles in the chest and diaphragm cause a person with ALS to rely on mechanical ventilation for breathing, and most sufferers die of respiratory failure within three to five years from the onset of symptoms. Some sufferers have survived more than 10 years.
It is important to remember that a person suffering with ALS has normal brain function. The person can think clearly, remember things, and have the same level of intelligence as before the ALS diagnosis was made. ALS affects the chain of communication at the motor neuron level. So, the brain is not affected. It does affect speech, swallowing, chewing and breathing.
ALS is sometimes referred to as Motor Neuron Disease or Lou Gehrig's disease for Lou Gehrig, the famed baseball player for the New York Yankees, who became afflicted with ALS, eventually dying from the disease in 1941.
This is a rare disease. Only two out of every 100,000 people will become afflicted. That means that there are approximately 5,000 new cases of ALS in the United States each year. People with ALS die so quickly that there are far fewer of them in our midst at any moment in time. That doesn't mean that the threat of this disease leaves our midst. The most common age for a person to first notice symptoms is between the ages of 40 to 70 years old.
Aurthor diagnosed with ALS 1/2004
Source: www.isnare.com