A high-calorie, high-carb diet may slow down the progression of amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurogenerative disease - often referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, according to a recent study HealthDay reported.

ALS is a rapidly progressive neurodegenerative disorder that kills nerve cells that control muscle movement (motor neurons). Patients gradually lose the ability to control the body's muscles, including the muscles which control breathing. This leads to respiratory failure and death on average about 3 years after patients are diagnosed.

As the disease progresses, patients often lose a significant amount of weight.

"Giving your patients more energy [calories] than they necessarily need or are burning could help them prevent disease progression, and it might actually help improve their survival," lead researcher Dr. Anne-Marie Wills, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, told HealthDay.

In their study, researchers found that patients given the high-carbohydrate,high-calorie diet experienced fewer adverse events (23 vs 42), and significantly fewer serious adverse events (0 vs 9) including deaths from respiratory failure than the control group.

For the study, 20 patients were split into three groups, each with a different diet plan - a control group (to maintain weight) and two high-calorie (hypercaloric) groups: one high in carbohydrates, the other high in fat. The diets lasted for four months, and data on safety and survival were collected from the beginning of the study for a total of five months.

Patients with ALS who have difficulty swallowing, as did the 24 in this study, often end up needing a feeding tube into the stomach to get enough to eat. These patients are usually fed a standard commercially available formula.

"There is good epidemiological evidence that, in ALS, survival is determined by nutritional status," researcher Dr. Anne-Marie Wills at the Massachusetts General Hospital said in a study. "This pilot study demonstrates the safety of a novel, simple, low-cost treatment for a devastating disease where currently, very few treatment options are available."

Wills said the adverse outcomes that researchers feared might result from weight gain, such as diabetes or heart disease, were not observed in their five month study.