The facts

When someone has HD they may change and behave differently. They may not be able to walk and talk as well as before and they may be more forgetful.Sometimes they may be more bad-tempered and get cross about little things. These changes take a long time and you may not notice them at first.

This is because of the way HD is changing in their brain. Our brain is very special and does lots of complicated things; it helps us to work, walk, play computer games, run, remember the way to school – everything we do in fact! The brain is made up of millions of brain cells.

When someone has HD, some of these brain cells become sick and start to die. This stops some of the important information that’s whizzing around the brain from getting to where it’s supposed to go. Imagine a relay race – each runner passes the baton on to the next runner until they reach the finish line. If someone drops the baton, that team don’t finish the race. In the brain the baton is the messages which are being sent. The message gets passed through the brain from brain cell to brain cell until it gets delivered to the right part of the brain.

*Example*: If you wanted to pick up a glass of juice, your eyes send a message to your brain about where the glass is, and then the brain sends a message to your arm to move your hand to the right place. This message is passed through the brain like a relay race.

When someone has HD, the message is being passed along as usual but somewhere along the way, one of the brain cells drops the baton! The message doesn’t get through properly and they drop the glass – smash! This is why the person with HD can be clumsy sometimes and drop things or fall over.

With all this going on in the brain, HD stops people being able to do some of the things they could do before.