Actor Kenneth Mitchell of “Captain Marvel” passes away from ALS; learn everything there is to know about this deadly neurological condition

Actor Kenneth Mitchell, a Canadian who starred in Marvel’s Captain Marvel and Star Trek: Discovery, passed away on Saturday, February 24. The 49-year-old’s struggles with ALS caused him to pass away.

Lou Gehrig’s disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is named for the well-known American baseball player who passed away from the disease. The well-known physicist Stephen Hawking suffered from ALS as well. Stephen Hawking emphasizes optimism for people with ALS when he says, “No matter how bad your life is, you can still dream about something and achieve it.”

ALS: What is it?
Kandraju Sai Satish, a consultant neurologist and epileptologist at Yashoda Hospitals in Hyderabad, describes ALS as a condition that affects the motor nerves that cause muscles to contract. Not only is muscle function compromised, but muscle mass is also lost. In addition to weakness and wasting, one of the hallmarks of ALS is the involuntary twitching of muscles.

The disease’s clinical presentation varies depending on which muscle group is impacted by the process. If the person’s speaking and swallowing muscles are compromised, they may exhibit difficulties speaking or pronouncing words correctly. Others experience difficulty walking on their own when their hands and legs muscles are affected; they require assistance to perform even basic tasks with their hands, like eating, dressing, and writing.

When a person experiences difficulty breathing, the issue arises when the pathology affects the breathing muscles. It’s interesting to note that this illness spares the patient’s sensations and does not affect their consciousness, despite the fact that it significantly impairs a person’s mobility, swallowing, and breathing. Most people experience a gradual progression of the disease process, starting with one group of muscles and eventually affecting another, until the respiratory muscles are affected. Instead of dying from ALS itself, people with the disease typically pass away from secondary complications like aspiration pneumonia and pulmonary embolism.

While the underlying cause of ALS is unknown in most cases, it may be secondary to an underlying cancer that has gone undetected in a small number of cases, and there are a few genes that have been linked to familial ALS.

Even with our growing understanding of the pathophysiology of ALS, there is still a dearth of novel medications that effectively reverse the disease’s progression. People who have ALS, however, don’t have to give up because cutting-edge technology is being developed these days to help them with daily functioning. There aren’t many treatments that can stop the disease from getting worse, let alone cure it.