Years of thinking about triggers...

[Lucky3]

Finally, after years and years of despair, powerlessness, and just thinking and grinding in my head, I think I've found triggers that cause my son's tics. What has helped me enormously (really HUGE) is this platform, in which I have never shared anything myself but have been reading for months). It makes you aware of the fact that you are not crazy, because sometimes your environment thinks that 'it's not too bad' or they think I make it worse than it is. While as a mother I feel that something is not right, that there are causes, and that you want to solve them for your child. It really seems like some kind of primal instinct. While at the same time trying to find the balance so as not to overdo it, which I found extremely difficult. This site also helped me in that, I've read messages from people who said that you don't get the years back and you have to enjoy your child, that he is not just the tics but has so many talents. And that you don't help him by going too far... I think this was and still is the hardest for me.

Our story and my quest in short:
Our son has had problems with his throat and breathing from an early age, a lot of coughing, a lot of throat infections and was sick with a fever every two weeks. From the age of three there were frequent sniffing noises, throat clearing, etc. They were not really 'tics' yet. Later we had his throat and nose tonsils removed, despite the fact that I felt I had tried everything first. This helped a lot with the fever/being sick etc. But those slight tics kept coming and going. After an intense period of moving / new school / corona / death of grandma (all at the same time) the tics exploded. They alternated but were almost always with throat / nose and later with eyes (that's something from the past few months).

We've known for a long time that dairy makes it worse, so we hardly give that to our son (we know what can and can't). I am also aware of PANDAS, but I do not feel that this is the cause for him.

Now I recently discovered by paying very close attention / writing down that MSG (glutamate) plays an enormous role and he gets a very bad tic with throat clearing because of it. Also from glucose fructose. As soon as he gets an abundance at once (such as a lot of spring rolls last weekend) it was immediately extreme. And he also suffers from pollen / seasonal allergies / dry air due to the air conditioning.

Now that I finally have more insight into the triggers, my thoughts turn to the cause. Why are these triggers a problem to him? And doesn't my other son suffer from it?
I now suspect it all comes from the gut.

He also regularly suffers from worms in his stool and from candida in his toes. Finally, I think he has a magnesium deficiency, it also seems to be the only thing that REALLY has a positive effect (I give magnesium citrate). Now I have discovered after a search that these things are also related to each other. Would he suffer from parasites? Which in turn cause a magnesium deficiency? A magnesium deficiency can also affect the candida infection. And then I read again that a magnesium deficiency causes more complaints when consuming glutamate:

If there is too little magnesium in the brain and too much glutamate, which is often added to processed foods as a flavor enhancer, the risk of neurological disorders seems more plausible: this is a negative combination of an excess of stimulant and a deficiency of inhibitory substances.

It's a long story, I had to get it out. And I will now continue with a magnesium test (not a blood test as it doesn't measure it well enough) and a parasite test. I hope this post might help you in your search or read something that will help me in my search. I also read here several times that people said 'don't stop looking for triggers' and Chemar has it on her profile: Never stop exploring, seeking and investigating information....your light at the end of the tunnel may be just around the corner !

And that sentence really stuck with me. Thank you for all your time to share your experience.

 

 

[Atex]

In general, I think you're probably on the right track to learn more about magnesium levels and get the digestive track in order; as long as your child isn't too terribly adverse to the additional testing.  We find MSG as a trigger too and find it to be a challenge to exclude it since it is now hidden under so many different names.

Your other son doesn't have outward issues with those things probably because his system has an adequate buffer against tics. He could very well have the same inflammation or immune response, but you're not going to see it as tics. I feel like kids with tics are living at the threshold, and any little thing that promotes inflammation or immune response will manifest as tics.  I can equate it to the blown disc I have in my spine; when I got COVID, the inflammation caused the nerve to go nuts and hurt so bad.  When other people got COVID, no back pain.  I did not have any buffer (i'm short on space around the nerve), yet others did, hence the difference.

I recommend really pushing your analysis into the interior environment and chemical free living (it's a rabbit hole if you arent already aware). VOC and pesticide exposures are super common in this country. The list is very long if you're trying to limit upsetting a sensitive system.   ... fabric softeners, scented everything, febreeze, synthetic soaps, synthetic cleansers, offgassing carpets/furniture/mattresses, tracking in asphalt on your shoes, mosquito spraying, lawn herbicides, tree fungicides, on and on.  We have basically gone scent free, and it's amazing how we can now detect whatever they're spraying in the school emanating from the kids and their bags every afternoon.