ALS Statistics: Shedding Light on Neuro Care

[Emilyomouse]

I just read a webpage on als. This page had one of the most helpful statistics I have ever found for all those scared and wondering about this disease. Please note that this statistic is for the entire general population. If you have been checked out by a neuro and told your fine, your odds skyrocket past even this. This might shed some light on why many of us have felt blown off by our neuros. I'll paste it below:"Before you read the section about Lou Gehrig's disease statistics and real numbers about incidence and prevalence please consider this if you are younger than 40 years old:If the incidence of ALS is 2/100000, 2 in every 100,000 people are diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease each year. Comparing this number to the age distribution numbers shortly outlined will tell us that the chance of getting Lou Gehrig's disease any particular year, when you are younger than 38, is about 1:165,000,000. Yes, one in 165 million people, a year".

 

[MarioMasher]

Recent studies suggest that Lou Gehrig didn't even have Lou Gehrig's disease. I guess that would be pretty fitting. Even the guy it was named after couldn't get it.

 

[Emilyomouse]

just fyi for those over 38 years old. The average age of onset is 65 with a 9 year differential. So even at the lowest end of that age range you would still be 56 years old. before the age of 50 the odds were still twice that of winning the lottery. The article also stated that for those 9 years over 65 (74) the chance really decreased, and kept reducing drastically until at around 90 years old where the odds were the same as those below 38. There seems to be an optimal( if you can call it that) age range that people get it.So, what to do with all these stats that show how rare the disease is by itself with no doctors evaluation. For those of us that have been checked out and still aren't impressing anyone, thats why.I know some will immediately wonder about contradicting info or articles that seem to be "everywhere"and I want to put that in perspective too. If 10 people within the last 10 years had spontaneous stomach explosion and wrote about it on gastro forums across the internet and you googled stomach explosion, what do you think would come up on google? " stomach explosion" info.When you do a focused search for a keyword, google goes to what has drawn the most attention and money for that word. They're not worth 200 billion for no reason, "marketing 101". The sites that house this info would be a select few with a more concentrated amount of either the original posted data or discussions referring to that data. "Same stuff different day" so to speak. Don't believe me, google "SASQUATCH". No one has ever found him, and he's all over the net. Last I checked he was as rare as rare gets.This should put " all those" articles that seem to be everywhere stating the scary exceptions to the rules in the correct light and I hope it helps. By the way the site even stated that there were more than twice the amount of people worried about this disease than those who actually ever have it, per year any given year.

 

[illeraceaccounting]

Interesting stat. I wonder how they arrived at the amount worrying. I believe that.

 

[BlueWolf92]

hmmmm....I am closing in on 55. Not liking this post too much.

 

[Emilyomouse]

These are all statistics. They take prevalence, age and calculate the likely hood of someone in the general population getting Al's. Other variables like clear doctor evaluations and time aren't even part of the equation, both of which would drastically reduce your chances even further.

 

[herty18]

I just read an article that stated that professional football players are 8 times more likely than the average population to get ALS. 14 NFL players since 1960 have been diagnosed with the disease. So there might actually be a link between repeated head injuries and ALS.

 

[MarioMasher]

That's the theory with Lou Gehrig too. He had tons of head injuries as a young man, way more than the average person. He was notorious for running into brick walls head first in the outfield, or getting concussions in football because he smacked his head so hard. So recent research has been focusing on that, as opposed to him actually having ALS. They think he just had repeated brain injury over the years that came to mimic ALS.