a summary of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease of the nervous system, its causes, symptoms, and complications, and how it affects the quality of life, as well as one of the famous sport figures that died from the disease.
2. Definition:
ALS is a progressive disorder of the nervous system, it affects neurons of the
brain and spinal cord, leading to loss of control over muscle movement.
ALS is also called “Lou Gehrig’s disease” After the name of the baseball
player who was diagnosed with this condition.
Lou Gehrig was a great yankees baseball player, who retired in 1939 after
he was diagnosed with ALS, he started to loss his coordination and his
game slowed as a result of this fatal disease.
3. Causes
ALS occurs due to deterioration of the motor neurons function, as they start
to die gradually.
Motor neurons are important component of the motor hierarchy which is
responsible for different types of muscle movements including: intentional
movement, stereotyped and reflex movements
Loss of motor neurons impair these types of movement, and it can ends up
with complete paralysis
4. Symptoms
ALS often starts in the limbs, hands and feet and then spread to the whole
body and with the progression of the disease and loss of more motor
neurons muscles start to get weaker and weaker.
Most of the symptoms are motor ones and include the following:
1) Hand weakness
2) Difficulty walking
3) Weakness of leg, feet or ankle.
4) Muscle cramps and twitching of shoulder,
arms and tongue.
5) Slurred speech and swallowing difficulty.
6) Cognitive and behavioural changes.
5. Complications
It usually takes about 3 to 5 years for complications to start to take place.
The most important complications that can be devastated are:
1) Breathing problems and usually death from ALS is as a result of respiratory
failure.
2) Eating difficulty.
3) Dementia.
6. Important Note
ALS is a Motor disorder of the nervous system, which means that the intact
parts of the nervous system that will not be affected by the disease are the
sensory system (such as Hearing and vision) and the autonomic system.
7. This course has allowed me to understand phenomena and events around
me in a better way.
For example: How it is hard for a person with Alzheimer’s disease not to be
able to recall events or recognize the face of relatives and loved one
because of problems of the memory the prevent us from making new
memories or recall old one.
Or How people with Parkinson’s disease who suffer from lack of movement
and How this affects the quality of their life, not being able to do small
things like wearing clothes or brushing your teeth by your own and how this
affects people around them.
How some people have their hearing impaired when they get older
because they lost some of the outer hair cells in the cochlear or became
more vulnerable to dizziness and balance disorders because of some
problems in the vestibular system in semi-circular canals.
And so this course gave me the chance to understand this different
situation and how to interacts in appropriate way towards them
