the alcohol. I hope this is some help. Fiona i was diagnosed a few years ago-my legs have a hard time walking the past few months why? - David (37) David, This is a difficult question to answer over the net as there are many reasons why walking can be affected in HD.  They include 1) bad chorea flicking your legs & tipping you over, 2) shuffling & slowness a bit like that seen in Parkinsons disease, 3) poor balance & 4) reduced concentration & attention. Sometimes there may be several causes at the one time. The only way to be sure is to see your doctor. It is often possible to improve walking with physiotherapy and also having your doctor check that your medications don't need to be changed, I read that modern gene silencing treatments considered would block both the mutant and normal gene. Why not just administer the normal one through medication instead of tweaking the treatments? - Phil (18) Dear Phil, As you are aware those with the HD gene have one normal copy, which works normally & one mutated copy, which causes the brain cells to deteriorate. The Huntington gene is also expressed in every cell in the body, but seems to cause damage in the brain. We don't know what it does in non-brain cells, but presumably it does something that might be quite important. It may or may not be safe to affect gene expression in non-brain cells. We don't know. The challenges