During two brief periods of time during mid-summer into early Fall when my son was 7 and then 8 years old, he had bouts of tics. He was rolling his eyes, smelling his fingers repeatedly, saying certain things, and making grunting and humming noises. Both times this happened, I gave him magnesium and things got better and I sort of thought it was just something he went through and was over. He has always had periodic worry thoughts, however, things like wondering if a burglar would come to our house, different worries like this would come and go but never enough to disrupt his life, more like passing things.
Fast forward to age 12 and with the same timing (began mid-summer) my son now seems to have pronounced OCD symptoms. It is much more pronounced than anything I've seen before and it is affecting him daily. He is worried often that he has cancer or that his heart is not beating correctly, that it's skipping or going too fast and he is going to have a heart attack. He is touching the floor repeatedly, running his hand over the top of chairs and the inside edge of doors throughout the day. He is blowing on plants and straightening rugs on the floor. At night before bedtime he is often crying and afraid to go to sleep, thinking that he will die in his sleep. He really seems to think he has or is going to have cancer. It is so very sad and upsetting. There's more than this with the OCD but that's a brief picture. It's now taking him 3 hours to get through a half hours worth of homework. Getting him to school in the morning is painful because he has slowed down doing everything. I think he is preoccupied with his fear thoughts.
In addition to this, he was diagnosed with ADD at age 7. Because of his history with tics at ages 7 and 8, however, we've never been able to give him ADD drugs (Psychiatrist said ADD drugs are too risky for a patient with any history of tics). He has asthma and a lot of allergies and food sensitivities (he is year around allergic to trees, grasses, dust mites, molds, peanuts, cashews, egg white, certain medications) and sometimes I think that's responsible for a lot of his issues. For this and other reasons, I really don't like the idea of putting him on any psychiatric medications for OCD or anxiety.
I've been trying to research alternatives to medication for his OCD and inositol keeps coming up as something that could help him. What I can't find, however, is any credible source that tells me what a safe dosage of inositol could be for my 12 year old son. I see written that 18 grams has been shown helpful for OCD but that is always written about for an adult. What amount of inositol could I safely give my son to see if it might be helpful to him for this OCD? I would contact his pediatrician to ask but mainstream doctors never seem to have knowledge about or agree to treating children with non-drug supplements.
I would appreciate any information and would love to know of any specific experiences of others who've given their children inositol for OCD. Thank you!
