What Are the Earliest Signs of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)?

The first signs of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are often muscle weakness and twitches leading to trips, stumbles, and other seemingly clumsy behaviors. Individuals may also find they have trouble speaking and eating.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare progressive disease affecting about 31,000 people in the United States. Known also as Lou Gehrig’s disease, it affects the nerve cells that control voluntary movements.

However, ALS can be difficult to diagnose at times. Early signs are often overlooked because people often write them off as clumsiness or the result of being tired.

This article helps you be more aware of the early warning signs of ALS, allowing you to get a proper diagnosis earlier to better prepare for managing the condition.

There are two main types of ALS, and each type can bring a different set of symptoms at the time you receive your ALS diagnosis. Both mean a progressive loss of motor neurons, which means that a person with ALS will start to lose control of movements in their limbs, mouth, or throat.

Early symptoms of ALS include:

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• Muscle twitches and cramps: These often impact the feet and hands, but they may include the tongue, too. These can occur whether you are awake or asleep, and they can disturb sleep.
• Muscle weakness: You may notice that the muscles in one hand and then the other are becoming weaker. It may be more difficult to button a shirt, or you may find that you drop things more often. Similarly, one leg and then the other may become weaker resulting in more trips and stumbles.
• Muscle stiffness: Muscle tone can increase until the increased stiffness impedes your typical movement.
• Slurred speech: Weakening facial muscles can make the voice appear more nasally and cause projection to be harder.
• Difficulty chewing or swallowing: This is the result of weakening facial and tongue muscles.

More about ALS

You can read more here about the causes, complications, and treatment options for ALS. Additionally, you can also delve into how ALS is different from multiple sclerosis here.

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Although ALS symptoms can begin at any age, the likelihood increases with age, You’re most likely to develop ALS between ages 55 and 75.

Other factors also appear to play a role in ALS development, including gender.

Older research indicated that more men than women are being diagnosed at younger ages. This means that symptoms are more likely to show up earlier in males for reasons that are not fully understood but may be related to exposures to different environmental toxins and different biological responses.

That same research also found that men are more likely to have symptoms first displayed in the spinal region, while women are more likely to show their first symptoms in the bulbar region. This means that men are more likely to experience problems in the arms and legs, while women may be more likely to struggle with speech or swallowing.

People of all races and ethnicities can develop ALS. But research also indicates that there’s a higher prevalence of ALS diagnoses in white and non-Hispanic people.

Language Matters

In this article, we use “male and female” to refer to someone’s sex as determined by their chromosomes, and “men and women” when referring to their gender (unless quoting from sources using nonspecific language).

Sex is determined by chromosomes, and gender is a social construct that can vary between time periods and cultures. Both of these aspects are acknowledged to exist on a spectrum both historically and by modern scientific consensus.