New Hope for Lou Gehrig’s Disease?
ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a devastating nervous system disease. It affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. You may have heard it referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
As ALS progresses, a person loses control of the muscles needed to move, speak, and even breathe.
Like most brain diseases, there is no cure.
This means the BEST option if you already have ALS is to slow its progression.
And it turns out a simple nutrient I’ve been recommending for years can do just that.
In a study published in the journal Neurology, researchers measured the omega-3 levels in the blood of 449 people with ALS.
Of all the omega-3s, ALA appeared to have the biggest impact on this condition. During the follow-up period, it was linked to…
- slower disease progression and,
- a decreased risk of death.
Thirty-three percent of the study participants who died during the 18-month follow-up had the LOWEST ALA levels compared to 19 percent with the HIGHEST.
After some careful number crunching and considering all the factors, the researchers concluded that the volunteers with the highest ALA levels had an incredible 50 percent LOWER risk of dying during the study period.
EPA, another omega-3, was also associated with a reduced risk of dying from ALS, as was linolenic acid, an omega-6 found in nuts and seeds.
The researchers are trying to promote a randomized trial of ALA in people with ALS. But they admit they face an uphill battle since ALA is not a patentable drug.
This INFURIATES me.
Mainstream medicine gives NO credit to natural treatments because, typically, no gold-standard studies are done on them. Yet no one is willing to DO these studies on non-patentable drugs in the first place because it isn’t cost-effective.
It’s a lose, lose—for medicine AND the patient.
I always advise my patients to get their omega-3 blood levels tested and focus on raising them if they’re low.
In fact, this is vital for everyone—whether you have ALS or not.
ALA is found in foods like flaxseeds, walnuts, and chia seeds. And the omega-3s EPA and DHA are most abundant in fatty fish like salmon and tuna.
P.S. If you’re not feeding your brain the nutrients it needs to support healthy cognition, its ability to function could be SHRINKING with each passing year. But we can fix that starting today with foods that PRESERVE your brain health and give you a BIGGER brain.
SOURCE:
“Association of Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Clinical Progression in Patients With ALS: Post Hoc Analysis of the EMPOWER Trial,” Neurology Jun 2023, 10.1212/WNL.0000000000207485; DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000207485
