Jump to content
ACN Latitudes Forums

Intuniv and Taurine


Recommended Posts

My daughter is 11 years old and has been suffering from motor tics for almost a year now. They started with a simple throat clearing and shoulder shrug and now she exhibits all of the text book motor tics. We have been on Intuniv, 2 mg for almost a month. We didn't see any improvement at the 1mg dose. I'm not sure if we are seeing improvement at this dosage either, but when we went to take her off she had such a strong day of tics, we were afraid. Now we are trying a gluten, dairy free, low sugar diet. We started 3 days ago and I am so overwhelmed. Our daughter is starting middle school tomorrow and we have informed all of her teachers regarding her condition. The part I fear most are the kids. We have practiced a response, but kids can be mean! Anyway, I would love to hear from anyone regarding positive experiences. I have heard a lot about taurine. I am going to call the doctor tomorrow and see if it is safe to take with the Intuniv. She takes omega 3 and magnesium everyday.

 

Thanks!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hello soccermom,

Did you wind up keeping her off the intuniv or kept at it after the bad day of tics when trying to take her off it?

 

did you wean slowly, or cold turkey? just wondering. even if it wasn't helping absolutely, perhaps just the spike in blood pressure, her system had a little jolt of withdrawal and that is what caused the spike, not necessarily that the med was doing much.

 

I have had to recently succumb to trying out the other blood pressure med, clonodine, as my son had a terrific spike in vocal tics while on a recent vacation. i am not sure if it is helping a little, or it is just natural waning. it is not gone by any means, but not as crazy as it was a few weeks ago. i am not sure what to do either. he is on the full dose this week, no side effects, so not sure if I should continue or not. but as you say, school will be starting and I am petrified. my son is 11 as well.

 

btw, I asked for intuiv first, but our doc would not go for it, he said clonodine first as there are least side effects. have you seen any side effects?

 

do you think the omega 3 could be a player in increase in tics? some of us seem to have that efect from fish oil here.

 

I can't give any advice on the dietary, we are just no good at that here, altho if you can stick to it, it is certainly worth a try. if you need more advice, Caryn on this board is very good at that and will be willing to help you out. search her posts, she has a site called 'healthyfamily.org' and she has lots of good recipes for this that might help you out.

 

 

thanks

Faith

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hello soccermom,

Did you wind up keeping her off the intuniv or kept at it after the bad day of tics when trying to take her off it?

 

did you wean slowly, or cold turkey? just wondering. even if it wasn't helping absolutely, perhaps just the spike in blood pressure, her system had a little jolt of withdrawal and that is what caused the spike, not necessarily that the med was doing much.

 

I have had to recently succumb to trying out the other blood pressure med, clonodine, as my son had a terrific spike in vocal tics while on a recent vacation. i am not sure if it is helping a little, or it is just natural waning. it is not gone by any means, but not as crazy as it was a few weeks ago. i am not sure what to do either. he is on the full dose this week, no side effects, so not sure if I should continue or not. but as you say, school will be starting and I am petrified. my son is 11 as well.

 

btw, I asked for intuiv first, but our doc would not go for it, he said clonodine first as there are least side effects. have you seen any side effects?

 

do you think the omega 3 could be a player in increase in tics? some of us seem to have that efect from fish oil here.

 

I can't give any advice on the dietary, we are just no good at that here, altho if you can stick to it, it is certainly worth a try. if you need more advice, Caryn on this board is very good at that and will be willing to help you out. search her posts, she has a site called 'healthyfamily.org' and she has lots of good recipes for this that might help you out.

 

 

thanks

Faith

 

thanks for replying! Our neurologist told us to just stop the medicine cold turkey, but after the bad ticking episode we kept her on it. Our doctor liked the intuniv because it was long lasting. We were on the clonidine patch, but because we live in florida and it was summer it kept coming off in the pool. we have been following the diet for 5 days and we have seen an improvement, but because our daughter gets home from school at 400 and usually has activities, we haven't seen her as much. ( we were on vacation for two weeks and together all the time). I just increased the omega 3 and she also takes magnesium. We are going to an alternative doctor in melbourne after labor day who claims to have experience with tics. We are so frustrated and it is so upsetting to see our daughter like this. I will keep you posted if anything else works! if you have any other questions, let me know!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi, I read your post and saw that you had recently been on vacation. You also mentioned about the pool and the patch coming off. Several people on this forum have indicated that chlorine is a big trigger for tics. Did you swim a lot more on vacation than normal? Usually pools at vacation spots have more chlorine than our home pools. By the way, I'm in Florida also and two weeks ago went to see a Neurologist in Melbourne (Florida)for my sons tics/OCD because he is pretty close to us. Are we allowed to disclose names of Doctors?

 

Trish

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi, I read your post and saw that you had recently been on vacation. You also mentioned about the pool and the patch coming off. Several people on this forum have indicated that chlorine is a big trigger for tics. Did you swim a lot more on vacation than normal? Usually pools at vacation spots have more chlorine than our home pools. By the way, I'm in Florida also and two weeks ago went to see a Neurologist in Melbourne (Florida)for my sons tics/OCD because he is pretty close to us. Are we allowed to disclose names of Doctors?

 

Trish

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Although the tics do seem to exacerbate in the pool we didn't swim on vacation. We are going to an alternative doctor in melbourne. I live in Parkland, FL and we see a neurologist here. I will let everyone know how the appt goes after our consultation. We are still on the 2mg of Intunviv.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...