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Trichotillomania


Debbie1

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Hi everyone,

 

I am posting because I would like to help a friend whose child developed trichotillomania a few months ago. I only found out recently that they have been dealing with this.

 

For those of who have experience with this symptom, can you answer a few questions for me:

 

1) How old was your child when this began?

 

2) What other symptoms did they have?

 

3) How did you connect the hair pulling to pandas? Can you have trichotillomania and it not be attributable to pandas?

 

4) What treatment helped your child the most?

 

I am debating whether to have a conversation with her about pandas, but I feel a little uneasy about it.

 

Thanks for your help! This forum is such a great resource.

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Yale did a study that showed that supplementing with NAC (N-Acetylcholine -- available from health food stores) helped a lot of people with this. If you check NAC on amazon, you'll see people say it pretty much stopped their hair pulling.

 

You should google NAC and yale and see their recommended dosages.

 

-- Liane

Hi everyone,

 

I am posting because I would like to help a friend whose child developed trichotillomania a few months ago. I only found out recently that they have been dealing with this.

 

For those of who have experience with this symptom, can you answer a few questions for me:

 

1) How old was your child when this began?

 

2) What other symptoms did they have?

 

3) How did you connect the hair pulling to pandas? Can you have trichotillomania and it not be attributable to pandas?

 

4) What treatment helped your child the most?

 

I am debating whether to have a conversation with her about pandas, but I feel a little uneasy about it.

 

Thanks for your help! This forum is such a great resource.

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Share on other sites

Hi everyone,

 

I am posting because I would like to help a friend whose child developed trichotillomania a few months ago. I only found out recently that they have been dealing with this.

 

For those of who have experience with this symptom, can you answer a few questions for me:

 

1) How old was your child when this began?

 

2) What other symptoms did they have?

 

3) How did you connect the hair pulling to pandas? Can you have trichotillomania and it not be attributable to pandas?

 

4) What treatment helped your child the most?

 

I am debating whether to have a conversation with her about pandas, but I feel a little uneasy about it.

 

Thanks for your help! This forum is such a great resource.

 

1. DS8 had 2 single episodes of trich last year when he was 7. One morning he had a small bald patch on the back of his head, and admitted to picking his hair out while he was lying in bed. A few days later the small patch was larger. It was horrible. He had plucked the hair by the roots, and it took the better part of a year to grow back in! Thankfully he hasn't done it again.

2. He was in a major PANDAS exacerbation - labile mood, OCD, rage, etc

3. We connected it to PANDAS because he already had the PANDAS diagnosis. He had many acute and debilitating episodes of OCD - trich, excessive hand washing, extreme phobias, etc, that would come on suddenly and disappear fairly quickly. Other OCD behaviours were more constant like germaphobia and evening-up, but he hid those ones really well and we didn't know about them until much later. Now that he's healing he talks about "when I had PANDAS I used to..." and tells us about all sorts of obsessions and compulsions that he successfully hid from us. I'm pretty sure there could be many reasons for trich outside of PANDAS, but I would definitely look at an infectious cause first - strep, lyme, myco, etc.

4. It went away on it's own. He was already on prophylactic penicillin when it occured, and we didn't change anything. I assume it was a flare in response to strep exposure, but who knows. We never saw a great reduction in OCD behaviours until we discovered and started treating lyme.

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Momcap:

What tests and treatment did you do for Lyme? Just curious.

 

We are fighting pandas symptoms currently without a clear picture of what bacteria or virus is causing the problems. We did lyme test through igenex, but it was only positive on 2 bands and considered negative by cdc and igenex standards. We are currently treating symptoms with supplements and natural anti-biotics/antifungals. We seem to keep symptoms from getting really bad and can get them to go away for up to 2-3 months, but when a cold or flu comes into the house or school, we have symptom flare up.

 

We would like to do more testing, but costs are too high right now.

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Momcap:

What tests and treatment did you do for Lyme? Just curious.

 

We are fighting pandas symptoms currently without a clear picture of what bacteria or virus is causing the problems. We did lyme test through igenex, but it was only positive on 2 bands and considered negative by cdc and igenex standards. We are currently treating symptoms with supplements and natural anti-biotics/antifungals. We seem to keep symptoms from getting really bad and can get them to go away for up to 2-3 months, but when a cold or flu comes into the house or school, we have symptom flare up.

 

We would like to do more testing, but costs are too high right now.

 

Sent you a PM.

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