MND is a cruel bastard of a disease, Doddie had done great work raising funds and awareness towards it.

RIP. MND is a horrible disease for everyone involved.

How sad. Is this similar to ALS?

My cousin died of MND. She was so strong for her kids. Hurts.

Yep. To be trapped in a body that will not respond and to be reliant on everyone around you. Just horrible.

My nan was diagnosed with it. Luckily she died only 6 months after the diagnosis from a heart attack. My mum has always seen it as a blessing.

It is the same disease, just with a different name. Doddie was a lovely guy. So popular, so giving and just a nice bloke. I'm proper upset.

Please tell me it’s a case of “Mistaken identity”.

The guy gave a tremendously moving speech at my graduation at Abertay University in July. So steadfast and uninhibited by his circumstance. Devastating to consider that was the last time he'd do that.

First Borje and now Doddie, sad week for the sports world 😔

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It is rotten for the victim of the disease and for the family. My cousin stayed strong for 10 years but it was awful on her kids. Horrible, horrible disease.

Sorry, Doddie lost his fight. He made quite a difference while he lived. More than most of us will.

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I don't think there are many people more universally loved or held in such high regard as Weir. I've never heard a single bad word about him.

I was lucky enough to be in the crowd 5 years ago when he brought the match ball out against New Zealand, and two weeks ago when his wheelchair prevented him from doing it again. He was frail, almost skeletal, but still smiling. Its something I don't think I'll ever forget.

He was at the Scotland match two weeks ago. Whatever finally knocked him off the perch was pretty quick. Another good man gone.

Context

ALS in and of itself is a horrible condition, but Doddie did so much for outreach and awareness. A good man taken before his time, may he rest in peace.

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What's MND? I've never even heard of it.

ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Known across the pond as motor neuron disease.

I was an in home care giver for a man in the final year of his life. he fought till the end I was a young kid and seeing him struggle and how his family felt it was truly horrible.

Can CTE cause ALS?

It’s one of those ones that the answer is we don’t know. It’s an area that’s still being studied and we just don’t know for certain.

He lasted a fairly decent while. My dad was diagnosed with upper bulbar mnd in August 2019 and died April 2020. I feel so badly for his family. Watching someone reduce from how they are, to the late stages of mnd is heartbreaking

ALS is more likely to happen to people who do excessive cardio like soccer players. Anecdotally, my father became a marathon runner in his 40s. He died of ALS after a few years of that lifestyle

I knew someone who went to college with Doddie. If there was anything happening, he was right in the middle of it. One day the lunch ladies were getting overwhelmed how busy it was, but then Doddie hops behind the counter, slings on an apron and starts serving mashed potatoes out.

The Deuce : Rudy, I'm going to tell you a story. A famous baseball player who's name I can't remember right now, had Lou Gehrig's disease, and he didn't let it slow him down.

From Gabor Mate's book The Myth of Normal, in regards to people with ALS and how nice their personality was:

"The nurses' insight (how unanimous it was for niceness to be found in ALS patients) reminded me of a paper on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) presented by two Cleveland Clinic neurologists at an international congress in Bavaria in the 1990s. Their staff, too, found that their ALS patients were extraordinarily nice-so much so, that the staff could in most cases accurately predict who would be diagnosed with the condition and who would not. 'I'm afraid this person has ALS, she is too nice' they would jot on the patient's file. Or, 'This person cannot have ALS, he is not nice enough.' The neurologists were dumbfounded. 'In spite of the briefness of [the staff's] contact with the patients, and the obvious unscientific method by which they form their opinions, almost invariably they prove to be correct."

So maybe being a nice bloke may not be such a good thing after all!

Ever think of how much of coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig’s disease?

Is there any understanding as to why this might be the case?

My aunty died from MND and she was the nicest person I have ever known.

Im certainly not qualified enough to answer that. Gabor mate is all about how our psyche affects our health, and so going down that route of thinking and giving a very armchair physician approach to it, it could be that very early on people who later develop ALS could have formed a maladaptive defense mechanism to social interactions by taking the “be as nice as possible no matter what so that other people will like me, cooperate with me, etc…” This could lead to repressed emotions not properly expressing themselves, such as anger, disappointment, boundary setting, etc… which could eventually lead to disease after enough years.

Or could it be that the disease itself causes people to be extra nice? Chicken or the egg? Idk. All I know is that it’s clinically observed that people with ALS are incredibly nice, and in some physicians opinion, almost pathologically so.

>All I know is that it’s clinically observed that people with ALS are incredibly nice, and in some physicians opinion, almost pathologically so.

I appreciate your thoughts on the subject.

The majority of famous sportspeople who have gone on to develop ALS were boxers or played rugby, football (soccer), football (gridiron) or ice hockey. Otherwise known as the sports where you often get smacked in the head. Whether or not academics feel they've studied it enough to reach a conclusion is one thing, but I think I have a good idea what the root cause usually is when somebody develops ALS after playing contact sports for a living.

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Such a Hard disease to cure, and to live with.

There's quite a few sportsmen in the UK with it now all relatively young so perhaps theres a link. Could be just bad luck as Its only about 3 or 4 but still seems a lot.