Hi. My son has been diagnosed with chronic motor tics & OCD (he is 10 1/2). He has the eye blinking/rolling; twitching of arms/legs; squatting to the ground in mid step & bouncing up then continue walking, etc. Putting a name to the face I have seen the past year has opened my eyes. The child neuro is said no meds because he is "still a functional member of society" (as he specifically put it to me..). So - in efforts to help my son myself I have found magnesium has been known to help reduce tics. The neuro said "go for it!" (and he let him know...since no other patient is trying this...).
Any feedback if 250 mg of magnesium/day has helped at all? And, how long until you noticed it worked?
Yes, actually it has! He has significantly improved. I would say 80% to 90% improvement. His arm still moves randomly sometimes and some minor facial tics but beyond that, the other symptoms have minimized significantly to the point that we don't even see them always. The squating down is gone, too. However, the OCD is still there but I dont mind if he always has to touch his cup with both sides of his fork at dinner...no biggie... Now...with that, we have also introduced a few magnesium rich foods into his diet as well. He eats Cracklin Oat Bran cereal and pumpkin seeds regularly. We tried the Silk milk but he wouldn't have it so some is better than none. Also, he has to get a good night sleep each night or he has a "bad" day with everything thrown at him at once - as if he wasn't improved at all. Lastly, when he gets extremely nervous his tics in the face & arms come back as well. It is a fine line he balances with the symptoms but if he stays focused, eats the right foods and gets sleep, he functions quite well. Thanks for asking!
We are really curious about trying the modified diet thing with our children too. I don't know if you read it but I put a post up yesterday 4/12 w/a short story of our situation. We would much rather try something natural that may help instead of just medicating our kids. We have a 9 yr old and a 3 yr old w/TS. We have tried a couple prescribed medications with our 9 yr old and she was actually falling asleep while eating dinner! So we have stopped those and took her off meds for a while. However, her tics seem to be acting up again and she has an appointment on 4/16 with the Neuro to see if he can give her something that may help. She is getting a sore neck because of her head twitching and between the head twitching and eye blinking it is getting in the way of her reading at school and causing problems for her. We also have just experienced our first problem with another student picking on her for it. So I was really interested in knowing if what you tried worked. I would also love to try that with ouir 3 yr old by as his tics have just seemed to explode here all of the sudden and we feel so bad for him. Has your child had any side effects from the extra magnisium?
I hadn't seen your original post yet...thanks for catching me up. What a challenge God gives us sometimes to raise our babies, huh? From what I had read when I was originally doing some internet learning on this, was that the magnesium deficiency could cause the motor tics. All of my son's became visible to us last year after his first season of intense select baseball with the constant motions of throwing an invisible ball (he plays catcher) even after the season was over...but then as we thought through everything, the signs were there always we just didn't know what they were and assumed it was nothing (throat clearing constantly, eye blinking, breath holding spells to passing out when he was 1 yr old). He doesn't eat poorly...he actually is my healthy eater between my two kids. With that said, I wanted to do 400 mg of magnesium but the neuro said for his size and weight 250 would be appropriate. I know if he was to take too much he would get stomache/leg cramping and such. He has had no side effects at all of taking the additional magnesium. His biggest pitfall was learning how to swallow a pill, as they don't make chewables for this (that I easily found)...I also didn't do it via script from the dr. I just went to the drug store and picked up a supplement (Natures Made I believe I went with). If this didn't work I was going to put him on a gluten free diet because that, too, was suppose to eliminate the tics. If nothing else, you could always pick up some of the cereal or Silk milk (as long as there aren't other allergy considerations) expecially for the little one. They'd probably chew that well enough (its been a while since my babies were 3...) and research magnesium high foods and see how they do. I found the pumpkin seeds easily enough at the grocery store by where the popcorn and/or roasted peanuts would be. I eat these foods myself...of course, I wouldn't make him eat what I'm not willing to eat. I think between the vitamin supplement and the additional foods to his diet, he probably is getting a higher dose of magnesium than warranted, but again....no side effects due to the changes for him.
I wonder if this will work with our children? They have Tourette's, so did my husband when he was a child, and it also runs in my husband's family. I guess when we go to the Neuro on Monday I will make sure to ask him about adding extra magnesium. Thank you for sharing! My husband is actually starting to have tics again now, which are being triggered from him seeing our children with theirs now.
Well, I certainly hope it helps. I recommend you be armed with some details from the web so you can have an informed decision. Even check webmd.com as there are details on there as well as other success stories on the web. I hope you all are able to find some relief. I wish you the best of luck!!!
As a permanent solution to his motor tics, I have realized Magnesium is not all I need to do for him. I can say that I will still stand behind a significant 85% to 90% improvement in his motor tics with taking 250 mg of Magnesium daily; however, if he is tired, stressed, nervous, or even has just been eating a bunch of junk food all day long and nothing healthy at all, I will see the tics back in his arms/hands.
I do know that when I ensure he gets a good night sleep, eats decent meals (less processed and more home-made/natural/organic), and is generally happy, I do not see any motor tics...but our life is not that easy, is it.
