Tics, or Involuntary Movements

This summer, we had a very strange incident with E. He woke up from his nap, and he was overwhelmed by tics. I’m not talking about a simple shoulder shrug here. As I attempted to document them, I counted at least fifteen separate involuntary movements. He had difficulty functioning normally because of them–it was next to impossible for him to talk or eat or run or play or anything because the tics were so disruptive. This was very hard for me to watch, and very hard for E. to handle.

Because he just woke up with this problem, right out of the blue, I didn’t call the doctor on the first day. Besides the fact that it felt very unreal to me that my child could have such a severe problem, I think part of me naively thought that something in his brain became disorganized during sleep and would fix itself during the next time he slept.

But that’s not what happened.

On Day 2, I called the doctor. He couldn’t get us in until the following day, and the appointment was with the doctor that I believe overmedicates while underdiagnosing. I was disappointed, but I felt at that point he should see a doctor regardless in case this was a major health problem.

On Day 3, we went to the doctor. I had done some major research before we went, so even though this doctor, predictably, wanted to give the poor boy a tranquilizer and send him to preschool {seriously, this was what he thought would fix the problem}, I was able to get a number of blood tests ran. I knew from my research that issues with copper and magnesium, as well as a couple infectious diseases, needed to be ruled out, and the doctor was willing to run the tests I asked him for.

All the tests came back within normal ranges.

I never gave him the tranquilizer because I didn’t have a diagnosis. I mentioned in the fever post that I’m not a huge fan of medication, and certainly not without a diagnosis. Also, as hard as it was to watch him and worry with him, I didn’t want to cover up symptoms. What if, underneath the tranquilizer, he was really getting worse, but I didn’t know? I couldn’t take that chance.

Day by day, the tics lessened in severity. A week later, we were able to see the doctor I had hoped to see initially. She told me that had she seen us on the first day, she would have run a full toxicity scan because she has seen excessive tics come on suddenly due to children getting into medications. She specifically mentioned Benadryl or other antihistamines. Apparently, the first doctor might have been encouraging me to continue to poison my son, because the tranquilizer was a relative of Benadryl.

The tics are controllable now. More importantly, he can run and play and be a little boy. What I have noticed is that they seem to increase if I am not careful with his diet. I do not know what brought them on in the first place, but I have figured out how to keep them under control. What is required of me here is a lot of discipline. I find that everytime I let up in areas of food especially, I start to see him displaying tics, and I realize that the whole thing was probably avoidable.

Here is what we avoid and other changes we have made:

• Antihistamines: Benadryl especially…we just don’t give him anything at all. Thankfully, he doesn’t have any known environmental allergies.

 

• Food additives: We discovered that E. should not have excess sugar {like candy}, Red 40 {this is probably the biggest issue}, citric acid {which also affects his kidneys and makes him go to the bathroom too often}, and dairy. Red 40 is in EVERYTHING {it is used to make purple and brown also}, so I pretty much cook from scratch. It is in cereals, crackers, most snack foods, and even most strawberry and rasberry yogurt. Red 40 is also in lot of cough syrups and liquid kid medicines, so ask for dye free at the pharmacy. Tylenol has a dye-free line of OTC meds. We try not to use medications at all, but dye-free would definitely be our choice if we felt we had need of something.

 

 

• Household toxins: We are careful about exposure to bug spray, weed killer, fertilizer, and I also recently switched to a laundry detergent called Charlie’s Soap that is the only detergent on the market I’ve found with no known toxins {it was also cheaper than what I was already using}. The average detergent does not rinse completely from the fabric and gets on the skin when the garment is worn. Skin is permeable, and the toxins enter straight into the blood stream through the skin. Perfumes and dyes that are in soaps are actually poisons, so our fabric softener is unscented, and we are careful about the soaps we buy, etc.

 

 

• Lotions: I’ve mentioned before that I think sunscreen is bad. The first post I wrote on the subject dealt primarily with the fact that sun is beneficial to one’s health, and so though there is a need to be reasonable about sun exposure, blocking sun doesn’t make much sense. Consider this the other side of the coin. As I mentioned above, skin is permeable. There are many toxins in sunscreen, as well as in the average bottle of lotion. E. never wears sunscreen now, and we are also careful about the types of lotion he uses when he has dry skin.

 

 

• Epsom Salt Baths: I have learned that a great way to help a child detox is to put them in a bathtub of warm water and add 1/2 to 1 cup of Epsom Salt. Let the child play in the water for 15-20 minutes while the salt soaks into the child’s skin. Epsom Salt releases a type of magnesium into the blood stream that aids in detox. If the child is hyperactive after such a bath, he does not need the treatment.

 

 

So I might sound a bit crazy, but apparently all or some of this is having an effect because our little boy’s average day is now very normal. And really, though processed foods pumped full of Red 40 can feel quite convenient, they really aren’t very healthy. And being unhealthy is very, very inconvenient.

 

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Want to read our story of recovery? My series of posts Tics: There and Back Again tells all. Start with Part I.