Motor Neurone Disease
Can you remember the ALS ice bucket challenge that went viral a few years back, where everyone was pouring buckets of ice water over themselves ?
This was to raise awareness for MND !
Although there are multiple different types of MND, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is the most common form accounting for roughly 60-70% of cases - this is what Steven Hawking was diagnosed with and eventually led to his passing.
Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is the name given to a group of diseases that affect the motor nerve cells (motor neurones) which are responsible for controlling our muscles that enable us to walk, talk, breathe and swallow causing them to not function correctly, fail and eventually die.
We have two different types of motor neurones, the Upper motor neurones (UMN) that take messages from the brain through the spinal cord and Lower motor neurones (LMN) which take the messages from the spinal cord to the muscles.
MND leads to the deterioration of these motor neurones.