ALS: What If We’re Looking in the Wrong Place?

ALS is one of medicine's most devastating diseases. More than 150 years after Jean-Martin Charcot first described it, major questions remain about what drives the disease and how to stop its progression.

On this episode of Sugar Crush: The Rest of the Story, Dr. Rick Jacoby takes on ALS through the lens of his Global Compression Theory—and asks a provocative question: What if there are mechanisms involved in ALS that medicine hasn't been looking for?

Using the highly publicized battle of former NFL player Chris Johnson as a jumping-off point, Dr. Rick explores the potential relationship between repeated trauma, metabolic stress, inflammation, fibrosis, and nerve damage. He also discusses reports of elevated ALS risk among athletes in contact sports and explains why he believes trauma deserves greater attention alongside metabolic factors. 

Drawing on more than two decades of experience with peripheral nerve surgery and diabetic neuropathy, Dr. Rick uses a simple but powerful metaphor: a cowboy hanging from a rope. Different doctors may treat the symptoms caused by the rope—but what happens if nobody cuts the rope itself?

That metaphor becomes the foundation for a broader discussion of nerve compression. From carpal and ulnar tunnel syndromes to nerves elsewhere in the body, Dr. Rick argues that nerves share fundamental biology even though damage to different nerves produces dramatically different symptoms.