To send a link and summary of this article to a friend, click here . He can t tell you exactly how he made it this far, but he can tell you that in the space of all of those extra years, he has developed the concepts of black holes, space-time and how the universe got started. And in his spare time, Hawking who can move only a few facial muscles and a single finger on his left hand wrote the 5.5 million copy best-seller A Brief History of Time. It s a disease in which nerve cells of the spine and the lower part of the brain are killed off little by little. The result is a progressive muscle weakness that affects the limbs, trunk, breathing muscles, throat and tongue.
Sense of touch remains normal, as do the bladder, the bowel and sexual function.
Intellect is not affected. Currently, there is no treatment. But there is one therapy being studied that holds out some hope for the future. And that therapy involves vitamin E and other nutrients. We have no idea what causes most ALS, says Gabriel Tatarian, D.O., medical director of the ALS Clinic at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia.