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From: Denc 🗡
My mate and biz partner and I was best man at his wedding, Dave was the most dedicated exerciser I ever knew. He died last year from MND He was just 70.. I saw him in the latter stages ( 10 months from diagnosis to death ) and it was not pleasant…. Telegraph I’m a motor neurone disease specialist. I’ve never seen a couch potato get MND Professor Dame Pamela Shaw says nearly every MND patient she has seen is physically active – and is now trying to unravel why I’ve seen thousands of MND patients,” says the neurologist Professor Pamela Shaw, “and almost never in someone who leads a sedentary life, what the Americans call a couch potato. Nearly everyone is physically active – sometimes professional athletes but also people who just do a lot of sport – the type of people who are described as always on the go, always buzzing about. “So I’ve always been interested in trying to unravel that, and it’s tricky, because clearly most athletes don’t develop MND. We think it’s a combination of the genetic make-up of the person, and their lifestyle.” Motor Neurone Disease affects about one in 300 people. Along with Professor Johnathan Cooper Knock, Prof Shaw has made a lot of headway into the causes of the disease, and they have discovered a link between strenuous exercise and an increased likelihood of developing MND amongst those who have a mutation in the C9orf72 gene, known as the C9 gene. Everyone has two copies of the C9 gene – but in the commonest genetic cause of MND one of those copies is altered. We took a big population of patients with MND who had the C9 gene change and conducted a questionnaire measuring how much strenuous physical activity they did over their adult life. We found that the higher the level of that strenuous activity, the earlier the disease came on. “If you have the genetic makeup and you’re a sedentary person you may never damage your motor neurones, but if you have that genetic make up and you’re a professional rugby player or a marathon runner, then you’re stressing your motor system. And if your genetic make-up means that your stress response isn’t strong enough, then you can gradually damage the motor neurones over the years.” Edited on 25/01/2026 at 09:50:12.

Current Thread	Author	Time
My mate and biz partner and I was best man at his wedding, Dave was the most ... [more]	Denc 🗡	09:48:20
>> Yup…...[more]	Hamsterwheel	10:39:14

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