Awareness: ALS

I've been reading a lot of blogs about awareness, for different things like Down Syndrome Kennedy's mom
and for Breast Cancer .
I have some things that have affected me and I wanted to post some things on them.
My grandmother had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. She fought it for about 12 years, I never heard her voice or saw her walk,but she was one feisty woman! ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.
There is no "cure" for ALS, although more people are living longer with it because of new studies . It takes away your ability to speak, walk, swallow and eventually to breathe on your own.
Approximately 5,600 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year. The incidence of ALS is two per 100,000 people, and it is estimated that as many as 30,000 Americans may have the disease at any given time.
ALS affects every race, every country, and both sexes and in some cases is heredity.

"Two independent studies, both funded by The ALS Association, have found a genetic abnormality that, according to researchers, is the most common cause of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). As reported in the recent online issue of the scientific journal Neuron, an unusual mutation was discovered, where a short DNA sequence is repeated many more times as compared to healthy individuals."


als.org

check out what you can do!