Safe dosage of inositol for 12 year old boy with OCD?

[good1]

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!

[MomWithOCDSon]

We tried inositol but were not successful in finding a dosage that successfully addressed the OCD/anxiety. Either it was just too strong, or inositol would be required in copious amounts. As for dosage pertaining to adults versus children, I would look more to size (pounds) than years (age), as it is my understanding that persons of 90 pounds or more are considered adults for dosage purposes. If, by any chance, your son is 90 pounds or more, you could likely follow adult dosage parameters, though with any supplement or medication, I would titer up gradually and slowly and keep an eye out for the impacts.

 

I also wonder if, given the comorbidities you've described (tics, OCD, ADD, etc.) if you've looked into/considered PANDAS or PANS? There's a large, very active forum here dedicated to that auto-immune condition and some of the key indicators of it are these comorbidities. It might be worth looking into. My son was diagnosed with "regular OCD" at age 6, but over time we were able to make the connection between his "waxes" and strep incidences, and it was ultimately PANDAS interventions that put him back on the road to health and happiness again.

 

All the best!

[emst]

Ditto, I agree w what Nancy said about finding your dose and comorbidities.

Diet is very, very important even though its tough to change diet with a pandas kid who is flaring it is the right thing to do. Healthy, real food is important.My oldest who fought me on everything and had hunger strikes is now a model stickler for the GFCFSF diet. The youngest one is on GFCFSF but she gets Pizza at school pm Fridays. She is the most recovered. Our son is on SCD, it really helps. He could not read. He started reading ad writing within a month of starting SCD.

[Wombat140]

I've read the papers on it myself when I was trying it, and I can only say that in the studies that have been doneon adults, there were no serious side effects even at 18 grams, so that suggests it's a pretty innocuous substance. (Couple of upset stomachs was the sum total of the adverse reactions, and everything upsets somebody's stomach - I'd be suspicious of any clinical trial that didn't report any upset stomachs!)

 

So that suggests that, for instance, 12 grams would be safe enough even in someone smaller than that. And that, or less, is apparently quite enough for many patients. As Nancy said, start small and work up gradually (that's what you're supposed to do with inositol in any case) and take his weight as a guide to how his dose ought (maybe) to relate to an adult dose.

 

There's a page here (by Fred Penzel, one of the well-known OCD experts) that has information about his experience with inositol in his practice and a very handy guide to how fast to increase the dose: http://www.wsps.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70:inositol-and-ocd&catid=36:ocd-and-related-subjects-by-frederick-penzel-phd&Itemid=64

[4kiki]

Hello. Based on what you've said I would suggest getting a Blood Histamine test. We just had one for our son by Dunwoody labs. It included histamine, DAO and Zonulin. My son has had these type symptom during allergy season but not as intense as this year. WELL this year we started giving him Allergy Immunotherapy drops and his symptoms increased majorly. I've referred to it as OCD but honestly its a mixed bag of OCD, vocal tics, stimming/sensory stimulation. I connected the dots and had his histamine tested. Mind you, he had barely any noticeable symptoms. Occasional sneezing or cough. His histamine levels were 4x the high normal. Histamine is actually a neurotransmitter and can cause neurological symptoms. Do some research on Histadelia kids. Describes my son to a T. Work with a Functional MD or ND who understands the methylation cycle and other contributing SNPs.

 

You can read up on Histamines and how they effect us. Some people have issues because of low histamines and other because too high. Here is two good links.

 

http://www.joanmathewslarson.com/HRC_2006/Depression_06/D_roller_coaster.htm

 

http://www.drkaslow.com/html/histadelia.html

 

[temperance]

Healthy, real food is important.My oldest who fought me on everything and had hunger strikes is now a model stickler for the GFCFSF diet.