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Course: Health and medicine > Unit 8
Lesson 12: Miscellaneous topicsALS - Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Sal explains the disease ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and takes the "ice bucket challenge.". Created by Sal Khan.
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- Who started the ice bucket challenge?(20 votes)
- Pete Frates who suffers from ALS is credited with starting the challenge.(21 votes)
- What is the current life expectancy of an individual who is found to have ALS. In the video, Sal indicates that Stephen Hawking has actually lived for decades after contracting the disease while in the case of Lou Gehrig - the disease claimed his life in two years?(16 votes)
- According to the ALS association, the average life expectancy of someone with ALS is 2-5 years after diagnosis. About 50% die within 3 years, 20% live for more than 5 years, 10% more than 10 years, and 5% more than 20 years. When Stephen Hawking was diagnosed at age 21 he was told he could expect to live another 2 years. That was over 50 years ago.(15 votes)
- if motor neuron degenerates than what happens to the relay neuron as relay neuron connects both the motor and sensory neuron,does relay neuron stops working(3 votes)
- No, the sensory neurons are not affected. ALS patients can feel, but their reflexes are affected because of muscular atrophy.
Like you want to take your hand away from the heat source, but your hand is not able to move on time. (delayed or non-existent response)(2 votes)
- as it is said in the video that Motor neuron degenerates than why sensory neuron still works ,aren't both motor and sensory neuron interconnected(2 votes)
- They are separate in the brain and spinal cord. They don't actually "connect" per se though they often travel together in peripheral nerves and there are feedback loops like reflexes.(2 votes)
- What are the symptoms that develop under ALS? Is there a way to diagnose it or a post-mortum way?(2 votes)
- Early symptoms of ALS include muscle cramps and twitching; weakness in hands, legs, feet or ankles; and difficulty speaking or swallowing. The disease is frequently misdiagnosed and there is no single test for diagnosis. You can learn more about diagnosis here: http://www.alstdi.org/what-is-als/#diagnosis(2 votes)
- Can ALS be passed down generations?(2 votes)
- yup! My entire family must go get tested because my dad died from it and we have to check to see if we have it(2 votes)
- How was Stephen Hawking able to live so long while fighting ALS since he was 21, until he tragically passed away on March 14, 2018?(2 votes)
- The disease impacted his muscles, not his brain. Jane and Hawking never gave up. And after their divorce, Hawking continued to accomplish more theories and ideas in cosmology. Perhaps it was his will power, determination, and perseverance that let him live for seventy-six years. One another thing (If you haven't already noticed.), Hawking died on Pi day of 2018.(2 votes)
- How does ALS compare to MS? What are their similarities and differences?(2 votes)
- What are some of the impediments to finding a cure for ALS and what are some of the more promising treatments for the disease - I did read the following article from the Harvard Gazette about an epilepsy drug which might be meaningful. They have also found a connection with a deficit in potassium channels of ALS neurons but it seems like there has not been much that could be done with this fatal neurodegenerative disease to halt its progression.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/04/new-hope-for-treating-als/(2 votes) - Is ALS linked to the environment?(2 votes)
Video transcript
- ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral
Sclerosis is an extremely debilitating and usually fatal disease and it's a horrible disease. You have your motor neurons,
the neurons that are essentially activating your
muscles, telling your muscles when to twitch or when to
contract and that these neurons, these cells that traverse,
that go from your brain all the way to your muscles, so there's these unusually long cells. They go through your spinal
cord, they degenerate. They degenerate and as they degenerate, there's no way for your
brain to send the signals to your muscles to do the
things that your muscles need to do and so your muscles atrophy and so that's actually
where the first part of ALS comes from, the "A" in ALS, Amyotrophic. "A" means no or not or
kind of the opposite. "Myo" means, is referring to muscle and 'trophic" is nourishment,
so this is one way to think about it is "no muscle nourishment", but what's really happening
is that the muscles start to die away because
they're no longer to be-- They can no longer be activated
because, I guess you could say, the wires or motor
neurons that would normally activate them, they degenerate
and what's especially horrible about this is,
obviously, it causes paralysis, people lose control over
basic things including their speech, is the whole time that
this is happening and this is degenerating, the individual
in question has full mental awareness, so they're fully
aware of what's going on in their body so you could imagine
it's a fairly horrible thing for people to go through and
there have been many famous cases of people with ALS, most
famously probably Lou Gehrig. In fact, ALS in the U.S.,
at least, is often called Lou Gehrig's disease, one
of the most famous baseball players of all time for
the New York Yankees. He died of ALS, really,
when he was about my age in his late 30s. Stephen Hawking, he is one of
the small percentage of ALS sufferers who have been
able to live several decades past his diagnosis. It effects one to two out of
100,000 individuals each year. So if you were to imagine kind
of a large stadium of people, in a given year you would expect to-- If you say there's roughly
100,000 people here, you would expect one to two of them to get afflicted with ALS. The reason why it's important
to have research behind this is it's a very, a very not
so well understood disease. People know what happens. They know that the motor
neurons degenerate, but they don't know why it's happening. There is-- Scientists have identified some
genetic component to ALS for some of the sufferers, but
for the majority, they can't identify a genetic component
and it's unclear what environmental components are causing it, although people think there
must be some environmental components, but as far as
most people can tell it just randomly afflicts people once
they kind of get into their early middle age, so it's a
really, really horrible disease and it's really important that
people have awareness for it and that there is an
appropriate level of funding and in case you're wondering, yes, I did take the ice
bucket challenge as well. I have been challenged by
Shawn O'Sullivan to do the ice bucket challenge,
so I'm about to do it. Y'all ready? - Girl: Yeah
- Boy: Yeah - [Voiceover] : (giggling) - Ah. - [Voiceover] : (laughing) - I'd now like to issue the
challenge to three other people. The other Salman Khan,
famous Bollywood actor. Esther Cho, who works
with me at Khan Academy and my kids, who seemed
too happy to see myself get doused with cold water.