Understanding ALS: Symptoms, Statistics & Prognosis

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease, is a slowly progressing disease that leaves a person's muscles unable to receive messages from their brain. As this happens, the person can no longer control these muscles.

Potential

• ALS affects about two of 100,000 people. With more than 6 billion people in the world, statistically 120,000 are living with ALS.

Time Frame

• Although some ALS patients die a few months to a few years after diagnosis, many continue to live for another 20 to 30 years or more. Physicist Stephen Hawking and musician Jason Becker are two well-known individuals living with ALS.

Effects

• Patients living with ALS often end up relying on machines to eat, breath and speak, as they can no longer perform these functions on their own.

Considerations

• Most patients do retain control over their eye and sphincter muscles, usually the only two muscles that are spared and continue to function without assistance.

Brain Function

• Most of the time their brain continues to function normally, but a small percentage of patients also develop frontotemporal dementia. Stephen Hawking and Jason Becker did the majority of their best work after ALS had rendered them disabled.