What is ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease)?

ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and it is a disease of the nervous system that affects a person’s ability to move certain muscles.

The central nervous system is like a complex network that sends the messages from the brain, like muscle movement, to the rest of the body. These messages are carried by nerve cells called motor neurons.

These motor neurons not only carry the messages, they do the “talking” for the brain and tell the muscles what to do.

ALS makes it difficult for messages to get through to the muscles.

The incidence of ALS is 2 per 100,000 people, and it is estimated that as many as 30,000 Americans have the disease at any given time.

In the US, ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, after the New York Yankee and National Baseball Hall of Fame first baseman, who was one of the first famous people to become ill with ALS in the early 1940s.