Tic disorders can impact the muscles of the face and eyelids, or they might happen elsewhere in the body. This condition causes harmless and temporary twitching that usually only impacts a few muscles in the body. These disorders can usually be managed with lifestyle changes and treatment of various kinds.
Tics can be motor or vocal. These tics might impact a body part or the muscles of the face or they might cause a patient to make a noise or a clicking sound. These are unvoluntary movements rather than involuntary movements. People can suppress tics, but suppression can be painful to the patient.
Tic symptoms can vary widely from patient to patient and are most commonly seen in children. Tics are also more common in boys than girls. Common symptoms associated with tics are:
There are various kinds of tic disorders that patients might experience:
This tic disorder is most common in children. It is characterised by one or more tic behaviours that last for at least one month but no longer than a year. These are usually motor tics but might also be vocal in nature.
In this condition, the vocal or motor tics last for longer than a year. This is more common in older children and adults. This condition is expressed as motor tics or vocal tics, but not both.
Tourette’s Syndrome is a more severe form of a tic disorder that can cause loud vocalisations and severe motor tics. Symptoms of this condition usually begin around age 5 but might be delayed until patients are 18 years of age. Many patients with Tourette’s syndrome experience improvement in their symptoms as they get older.
The cause of tics is not well-understood. It is thought that stress and anxiety might bring tics on in some patients, and sleep deprivation has been linked with the expression of tic symptoms. Studies have proven that medications used to treat ADD and ADHD are not actually responsible for tic symptoms as was once thought.
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Doctors will look for the presence of motor and vocal tics that occur at least several times a day before diagnosing someone with a tic disorder. This condition will need to have presented itself every day for more than a month to be considered a tic. Medications can cause this behaviour in some patients, so a complete medical history will need to be taken to ensure that the patient is not taking a medication that is causing the tic.
You cannot prevent tics. The causes of this condition are not well-understood, and even in cases where medication might be a factor, not everyone experiences this symptom related to taking these drugs.
There is no one specific treatment for tics. In some cases, medication and cognitive behavioural therapy can make a big impact on the occurrence and frequency of tics. In other cases, these therapies are not effective, and hypnosis and other more uncommon treatment protocols might be pursued.
Tics usually have periods of remission and then come back, even with careful maintenance of treatment routines. For patients with Tourette’s, remission periods are much more limited unless the condition improves over time on its own.