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. (more…)

Dr. Rodney Ford, a pediatric gastroenterologist from Christ Church New Zealand, has launched two public service videos that explain very simply how Gluten can affect the brain and the gut. Dr. Ford is the author of several books about what he has termed, “the gluten syndrome”. Dr. Ford urges people who suffer from reoccurring bouts of illness yet test negative for celiac disease to go ahead and try the gluten free diet anyway. The first video is geared toward children and adults alike and makes a very understandable and simple explanation of how gut and brain symptoms are connected in the person who suffers from gluten intolerance, or the gluten syndrome. (more…)

The decades old firestorm debate over whether or not thimerosal in vaccines causes Autism got heated up last week when Jenny McCarthy made her accusation on the Oprah Winfrey Show. The U.S. Senate has just released a report after an 18-month long investigation of the FDA and CDC concerning thimerosal levels in pediatric vaccines and the rising rates of neurological disorders in U.S. children. Their verdict: the FDA is guilty of forcing parents to inoculate their children with hazardous amounts of poisonous mercury in the name of disease control. (more…)