NJDADDY

I'm thinking of giving a little MJ to my DS. His tics are so bad and I can't stand those prescriptions. I've read many, many stories where it's a big help, including one man who gave his son just a tiny pinch each night orally. I don't beleive in legalizing drugs except for medicinal use.

I read about that study with great interest. They found a family where the dad and all eight of his kids (all with TS) had a small genetic defect which caused them not to have enough histamine in their body. The researchers beleive that low histamine levels may be a cause of TS. Among other things, histamine is very important for healthy brain function and neurotransmission. I was in touch with one of the authors of the article and he said that, as soon as they can, they will begin testing Histamine 3 receptor antagonists on adults with TS. These drugs are in late stage development and only affect histamine levels in the brain. It should be interesting to see what happens. If one wanted to raise histamine levels themselves, they could (very carefully) supplement with the amino acid l-histidine, which converts into histamine. It would have to be done carefully, though, as histidine raises histamine all over the body, not just the brain. It's something I'm looking at for my son, that is, possibly supplementing with a tiny dose of histidine and slowly increasing it, watching for any side effects and co-supplementing with zinc as it can be depleted by too much histamine. There are other severe side effects from too high levels of brain histamine, so it's not something to be toyed with.

That's great advice Chemar. My question is, how much magnesium (in miligrams) would that kind of cream make? And, how much would you apply and what kind of pure cream could one use? Thanks in advance.

The deep brain stimulation is interesting to me not only because it seems to effectively control even the most severe cases of TS, but beacuse doctors have been able to pinpoint a part of the brain that , when treated, can be made to stop causing symptoms. It would seem to me that, in time, researchers might find less invasive but equally effective ways to treat that same part of the brain. I think--with the right minds working on it--Tourette's Syndrome may become a thing of the past relatively soon.

Hi Rysmom, What dose is your son taking? And, if I might ask, how old is he, what does he weigh and what kind of tics did he have? And what's the doctor's name? Glad to hear things are going well!!

I bought some of the Native Remdies medicine called BrightSpark, but my wife, pharmacist that she is, decided we couldn't try it on our son because it contains minute amounts of some dangerous substances, such as arsenic. Now, I know that the Chinese (and presumably other culures) have used small doses of arsenic and otherwise dangerous stuff to treat a whole bunch of things. But she won't budge. I even popped a few of the pills myself to show that they were safe but she didn't care. I explained to her that nobody appears to be getting sick from it but she still won't allow it. There are a few other Natural Remedies products that she would go for, but I think BrightSpark is the only one that specifically mentions usefullness against tics. If thhere is something to those homeopathic remedies (and I beleive there may be), I may have to take all of us to a homeopathic doctor and have my son treated by him. That might assuage my wife. Please let me know how you do if you do try it.