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If you have found yourself here after a Google search about “tics,” you may have already been to a doctor about a few chronic twitches or muscle spasms that won’t go away. After a consultation, you may have been given a diagnosis and possibly been disappointed too when you discovered that there is no known medical cure. If you are like us, and have a child diagnosed with a chronic multifocal tic disorder (tics in different locations on the body), you could have also been told by your doctor that medication, while available, does not come without side effects, and that the best treatment is to ignore the tics and carry on with your life, business as usual and hope that they fade over time.
This is basically what happened to us two years ago when we took our then almost 4-year-old son to a neurologist after he began to exhibit noticeable ticcing behaviors during the Christmas holidays. This is our story, and I attempt to tell it in hopes that other folks who find themselves reading this narrative may find a bit of usable knowledge and above all else, hope.
About 20 percent of children may develop tics at some point during their prepubescent years. Usually mild cases involve eye blinking or nose scrunching and are pretty benign in nature. I was never aware of them, quite honestly, until my oldest son developed tics about two years ago after we took him for his preschool vaccines.
Since the fall and winter of 2006, I’ve noticed that mild tics are fairly common in the public. Most kids who develop them are pretty good at creatively making them a discrete part of their lives. Most folks who have kids with tics notice that they wax and wane in unpredictable cyclic fashion, often times correlating with allergy seasons or viral and bacterial outbreaks. Some see waxing and waning correlate with diet. For others there is no known correlation between tics and environmental or dietary influence. Others claim that stress is a major factor in the development of tics. If you pay attention to folks while at the airport or a crowded shopping mall you may find one or two twitchy ones passing you by.
In our case what we saw was an increase in tics that seemed to pick up speed and intensity, like a snowball rolling down hill, over the course of three months. What started with a chronic sniffing that we originally missed as a tic, was soon combined with a mild, benign eye blinking tic. When the sniffing and eye blinking was accompanied by a slow exaggerated blink and shoulder shrug we knew we had something serious we were dealing with. More movements and sounds followed: teeth grinding, lip smacking, sleeve pushing, grimacing and neck twitching. Now our son had whole host of dysfunctional movements and sounds that began to impede on his daily activities. He began to develop very real fears, anxieties, and routines that seemed uncharacteristic of his little developing personality. Article continues on next page…
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Tags: Chronic Multifocal Tic Disorder, Food Intolerance, Latitudes, Natural Treatment, Neurological Disorder, Tic Disorder, Tics, Tourette Syndrome, Transient Tics
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Meet the Author
This article is exactly what I needed to start with in trying to figure out how to help an adult loved one with occasional tics. It is greatly encouraging to know that there are means to help them so they don’t have to tough it out on their own. Your family’s approach to your son’s tics and the steep learning curve that everyone has reached and shared with so many of us are truly inspiring and moving.
yes the love you had to your son is very inspiring. i also want to share this links to you.
http://www.mercola.com/downloads/bonus/Dangers-of-Mercury/report.aspx
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/04/16/latitudes-interview.aspx
if you have time you can read the articles, i hope this could help you. thanks for sharing this article. it really gives a big help especially to those experiencing this problem.
Thanks Mercola,
I agree that mercury poisoning is a very real problem for many kids who tic. Surprisingly, in our case, our son had no heavy metal poisoning. The only element he was high in was copper, which is also dangerous and can cause depression. He was also anemic, which is puzzling to doctors. Unless, of course, they are familiar with celiac disease. Then it makes sense.
I think it is important for parents to get their children tested for heavy metal toxicity, to either rule it out as a possibility or identify it as a possible trigger. Mercury is present in a select few vaccines still (and we were careful not to give any for our son, by the way), and are also present in CFL lights and thermometers. We originally had a real fear that our son had heavy metal poisoning. But surprisingly, in our case, that wasn’t so.