Tics, Twitches and Tourete’s

If you have a son or daughter with Tourette, or tics that do not seem to want to go away, you can be instrumental in finding a cure. If your doctor uses that old excuse, “it is not curable,” then do your own investigating. Find the clues and talk your doctor into trying alternatives. If the alternatives are natural substances, the risk is minimal. Certainly less risky than the dangerous pharmaceuticals they are experimenting with on kids today. Because nobody knows for sure what causes tics and TS, anything could be causing them, including a vitamin or mineral deficiency, or an inability to assimilate nutrients, resulting in nutrient deficiencies.

Tics are not harmful, but what may have caused poor Tommy’s tics was the medication he was on for his hyperactivity. Remember, doctors do not know for sure what causes tics and Tourette’s. In a study recorded in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, the medical records of 122 children treated with stimulant drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at a Long Island behavioral center were examined. Eleven of these children developed tics, which in three cases disappeared without discontinuation of medication and in seven cases disappeared when medication was ended. Family histories were taken into account, but had no bearing on the outcome. The researchers estimated that as many as nine percent of children treated with stimulant drugs for ASHD may develop tics or other involuntary, repetitive movements. If you need more compelling evidence of the dangers of neuroliptic drugs, a condition in which psychiatric drugs causes involuntary movements.

Tics are defined as involuntary muscle movements such as eye blinking or tongue clicking. There are two kinds of tics. Motor tics include blinking the eyes, shrugging the shoulders, or shaking the head. Vocal tics include clearing the throat, sniffing, coughing, or saying words out of context. Because they are not under a child’s control, the child do not use them as a means of calming down, as he would with a nervous habit. The important thing to remember is that tics are physical problems, not psychological ones. If your child has tics, please do not assume they are a behavioral problem, subject to tranquilizing drugs; and do not let anyone make you believe it.

Although they are most often a response to stress, tics are not always a direct response to a stressful situation. They sometimes happen randomly, explains Ruth Brun, M.D., a psychiatrist in New York City who specializes in the treatment of tics, Roughly one child in eight develops tics, and boys are four times as likely to have tics as girls are. Most tics will disappear after a few weeks or months – a year at the most. They may never come back or they may come back for a little while and then disappear again. Because they are difficult to control, Brun notes, “Telling your child to stop is not going to help. 

The best evidence suggests that, although TS has physical symptoms, the disease is a neurological disorder; Researchers believe that dopamine, a brain chemical that regulates voluntary movements, is somehow involved. In 1961 Italian and French researchers discovered that halperidol, a major tranquilizer used to treat severe mental disorder such as schizophrenia, also suppressed tics. Haloperidol is believed to block transmission of dopamine. It is not clear to researchers whether the brain’s dopamine systems are overactive in TS or whether the dopamine receptors in the brain are hypersensitive. Other neurotransmitters (serotonin and norepinephrine) may also be involved. 

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