Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is a debilitating condition that affects your brain and nervous system. ALS is a motor neuron disease, which means it affects your ability to perform voluntary functions such as breathing, moving your limbs, and talking. There are many side effects to ALS, but the most detrimental is that you slowly lose your ability to move your arms and legs, breathe, and speak.
ALS affects everyone differently depending on the severity of the condition and how effective your treatments are. However, in all cases, ALS eventually proves fatal, often due to respiratory failure. This happens because your heart and lungs are not able to oxygenate your blood, and people essentially suffocate. Unfortunately, there is no cure for ALS. However, there are treatments that can help slow the progression of the disease in the hopes that a cure is eventually developed.
While medications are not able to cure ALS, the right combination of medications can slow the disease. Medications are also used to mitigate symptoms, but they can only do so much, as additional treatments will always be necessary. Here are some of the most common medications used to treat ALS.
While each of these treatments can slightly delay death, they are not cures for ALS. Instead, they simply delay the inevitable death of neurons and nerve cells, which eventually leads to the inability to breathe, talk, and move your muscles.
In addition to medications, various forms of therapy are necessary to help people with ALS maintain their muscle movement and ability to breathe and speak for as long as possible.
ALS inevitably causes the weakness and breakdown of your muscles, resulting in the inability to move your arms and legs. Once again, while physical therapy cannot prevent this from happening, it can help you maintain muscle strength and movement for as long as possible. Physical therapy can also reduce the amount of pain and discomfort you feel as a result of ALS.
While occupational therapy is similar to physical therapy, it is more heavily focused on improving your life in practical ways. This includes helping you perform activities of daily living, such as using the bathroom and getting dressed, as well as finding new ways to do things and compensate for your deficits. Your occupational therapist can also help you make changes around your home so that you can navigate it more easily.
In addition to physical and occupational therapy, speech therapy is another valuable treatment for people with ALS. Speech therapy is geared toward helping you maintain the ability to breathe, swallow, and speak on your own. It can help you retain these abilities for longer than if you went without therapy.
Because ALS treatment simply serves to slow the progression of your condition, you will eventually require assistive devices and equipment to cope with your symptoms. This can include arm and leg braces, walkers, crutches, assistive breathing devices, electric beds, and wheelchairs.
ALS is one of the most debilitating and unfortunate neuromuscular conditions in the world. It is a disease that progresses very quickly and often proves terminal in three to five years after your diagnosis. The exact cause of ALS remains unknown, and there is also no cure or way to delay the disease’s progress substantially. However, treatments have come a long way for ALS, and there is hope that a cure will eventually be developed.