Lou Gehrig's disease?!
Question: Lou Gehrig's disease.?
I am doing a research paper for school would like more information on this illnessHealth Question & Answer
Answers:
The official name of this disease is Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. You can find a lot of good information, probably everything you need, at the ALS Association's website.
Basically, this is a disease that causes the body to become paralyzed, while the mind remains normal. (In a way, it's sort of the opposite of Alzheimer's disease, in which the mind goes but the body remains normal.) ALS is basically a nerve disease too: the muscles of the body are unable to receive "commands" from the nerves, so the muscles stop functioning.
In my mom's case, her first symptoms were weakness in the right side of her face and then weakness in her right arm. This came on slowly, and it looked like she'd had a stroke.
Gradually it got so bad that she had trouble talking because she simply couldn't move her mouth. Her entire body became weak, although in her case her legs worked better than her arms.
Within a year of being diagnosed, she was unable to eat because she couldn't swallow, so she decided to have a feeding tube put in. By this time, she could hardly walk around and she'd lost so much weight that she was a little twig. Breathing became increasingly difficult and she had to use a CPAP machine to get enough air. Her chest muscles were too weak to breathe. She couldn't sleep lying down, even with the CPAP.
Eventually, she suffocated to death. Some ALS sufferers choose to go on a ventilator to prolong their lives, but it's rare because by that time, their lives are so horrifying that they're not afraid to die anymore.
They don't know for certain what causes ALS. It is not contagious. In some cases, there is a genetic link but for most people, no one knows why it happens. My mom was exposed to DDT when she was a child; the doctors think that may have something to do with it but they don't know.
Good luck with your paper; it's an interesting and awful disease.Health Question & Answer
Basically, this is a disease that causes the body to become paralyzed, while the mind remains normal. (In a way, it's sort of the opposite of Alzheimer's disease, in which the mind goes but the body remains normal.) ALS is basically a nerve disease too: the muscles of the body are unable to receive "commands" from the nerves, so the muscles stop functioning.
In my mom's case, her first symptoms were weakness in the right side of her face and then weakness in her right arm. This came on slowly, and it looked like she'd had a stroke.
Gradually it got so bad that she had trouble talking because she simply couldn't move her mouth. Her entire body became weak, although in her case her legs worked better than her arms.
Within a year of being diagnosed, she was unable to eat because she couldn't swallow, so she decided to have a feeding tube put in. By this time, she could hardly walk around and she'd lost so much weight that she was a little twig. Breathing became increasingly difficult and she had to use a CPAP machine to get enough air. Her chest muscles were too weak to breathe. She couldn't sleep lying down, even with the CPAP.
Eventually, she suffocated to death. Some ALS sufferers choose to go on a ventilator to prolong their lives, but it's rare because by that time, their lives are so horrifying that they're not afraid to die anymore.
They don't know for certain what causes ALS. It is not contagious. In some cases, there is a genetic link but for most people, no one knows why it happens. My mom was exposed to DDT when she was a child; the doctors think that may have something to do with it but they don't know.
Good luck with your paper; it's an interesting and awful disease.Health Question & Answer
Lou Gehrig's disease or also known as ALS, is a disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord, ALS is progresses can be quite variable from one person to another. The survival time with ALS can vary from person to person, but generally three to five years, others can be much longer.Health Question & Answer