How long did it take to see improvement?

[JaneFBH]

All the success stories and info about magnesium and diet changes are so incredibly helpful. Would you please let us newbies know approximately how long before you saw results with these regimens? Understanding every child is different, it would be so helpful to have a gauge of some kind.

 

Also, did tics decrease then increase at times? I would expect that is to be expected.

 

Thank you.

[Chemar]

Hi

Remember that if the tics are from genetic TS then they may not totally go away. I defined improvement for us as a decrease in the frequency and severity of the tics.

 

My son had a pretty rapid improvement once we started him on the supplements and dietary/environmental modifications. But we added things gradually and so the full effects were not seen for some weeks, and we were also doing acupunture and NUCCA chiropracty.

 

But I do clearly remember the dramatic improvement right at the start after he had that first soak in an epsom salts tub!

 

Still, as you have said, each child is different and it really also depends much on what the root cause of the tics are.

[zinto]

Hi there

It's almost 2 years on for us ( we have moved slowly ) and I am yet to see enough of an improvement to validate what we are doing .

That said - how would I know how much worse he could be if we weren't doing anything ? My parents keep saying to me let it all go none of it's working but I feel he could be worse too at this point .

Our main tic is the eye blinking which has been around for 12 months with increasing intensity with no breaks . My son is only 7 so I do worry a lot for the future .

So far we have introduced Epsom baths , gone gluten dairy and processed food free , an enviro doc testing period which came back showing the need for a bug rebalance and the subsequent treatment my son is now on which has only made things worse so far. He takes probiotics also via fermented foods and capsules but other than that no other supplemts yet as we needed to see what of the other stuff worked . Next I want to attempt acupuncture. Oh he also does chiro fortnightly too.

How old is ur child and what are the symptoms ? I wish u luck . This board is very useful

[mar]

Do not give up n matter what anyone tells you. You are doing so good and now so much more early on that I knew. My son had the eye blinking tic which come and go for years starting at 4 . Have you looked into environmental allergies! Dogs, dust, molds and what not.

Mar

[Pilbara]

For us, I'd say it took quite a few months to see measurable improvement. But I think it takes time for the body to start to absorb the nutrients, we are also detoxing him from Aluminium very slowly. From the time when we first noticed the tics, for the following 6 months they were at their worse. Since then it has been on a gentle downward slope and at around 10 months it is was my son's first period of being totally tic free, which lasted around 2-3 weeks. He still has both vocal and motor tics but they are not relentless like they use to be. He is really accepting of them and if anyone asked he replies "they are just my noises" or "that just what my body does". But for the most no-one notices them. He's in a good place and I could not be happier with his progress.

[JaneFBH]

Thank you all for your replies. Appreciate your input so much. Some of it gives me hope, but sometimes it is so darn depressing. My DD has them the worst in school, when she knows she needs to be quiet she says the urge to tic is overwhelming and then she can't concentrate. We have a modified plan in place for her, but her grades are suffering. Looking into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

[Chemar]

It is well documented that attempting to supress TS tics actually exacerbates them! so that may be why she is having them worse at school.

 

Part ofg my son's 504 plan accommodations were that he could give a hand signal to the teacher(s) so that he could step outside and release his tics and then he would come back into class more relaxed.

 

Also, there may be something in the class that is triggering too...fluorescent lighting, those dreadful plug in air fresheners, formaldehyde in new carpets, arsenic in new woodwork, new paint, teacher wearing perfume or scented lotion etc etc etc etc etc.....real hard as some of those are triggers that may not be possible to eliminate.