Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Fuzzycolombo t1_ixyvrz2 wrote

Reply to comment by KillerKilcline in Doddie Weir, former Scotland and Lions second-row, dies aged 52 by KillerKilcline

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!

4

lujodobojo t1_ixzhseo wrote

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.

1

Fuzzycolombo t1_ixzp7pr wrote

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.

2

lujodobojo t1_ixzqdwn wrote

>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.

1