This past year, Jennifer Beckerman has been stronger and more hopeful than ever before.
"I’m really the same person, I just added three letters to my name,” said Beckerman.
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, commonly referred to as ALS, is a disease that slowly attacks a person’s neuromuscular system.
Doctors diagnosed Beckerman with the disease on Dec. 6, 2015.
“I started having some difficulty using my left leg, some unbalance,” she told 41 Action News. “The left leg started to fail more and it took about six months for them to give me the diagnosis.”
Today Beckerman can no longer walk or drive her beloved Harley Davidson motorcycle. She is also beginning to lose the strength of her core. But that doesn’t stop the Kansas City mother from living her life.
“I’m not scared yet. Maybe one day but I’m not scared yet,” she said.
Until now, nothing has been proven to slow down the progression of the deadly disease. Although one professor at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences believes she might have found a way.
"At the early stage, I was looking backwards. How we look at the muscle and the muscle function. Can we slow down the whole body progression,” said Dr. Jingsong Zhou.
For almost four years Zhou and her team, in collaboration with a team at the University of Illinois in Chicago, have been studying ALS.
Their research shows gut bacteria could be a potential contributor to the progression of the disease. Furthermore, they discovered mice with ALS live longer when given a bacterial product. Ultimately suggesting probiotics might be able to help slow down the disease.
“[This research] really opened a new direction to look at the disease from a different angle,” Zhou said.
Zhou and her team published their first paper on ALS in 2015. Eventually, they received funding from the ALS Association to continue their research.
Funding for the research came from one of the 58 ALS Association grants, totaling $11.6 million. The money for the grants was raised through the ice bucket challenge that went viral.
"The possibility that this may be able to stop for a little bit is huge for me and the LS community,” said Beckerman.
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