1. Motor Tics: Uncontrollable Movements
Sudden movements, which may be repetitive or difficult to control, are called “motor tics”. These can involve many different groups of muscles or may affect just one muscle. Tics are often sudden repetitive types of non rhythmic actions (which classify them as motor tics) or sounds which involve specific groups of muscles (which are know as phonic tics). Simple types of motor tics are most often sudden, meaningless and brief types of movements, such as a shoulder shrug or blinking of the eyes . Many motor tics can be of an endless variety such as hand-clapping, neck stretching, mouth movements, head, arm or leg jerks, lip smacking, facial grimacing, wrinkling of the nose, twitching of the head, kicking, grimacing and even lip biting.
2. The Stress Factor
Emotional stresses have been known to make the occurrence of tics worse. When these begin to happen more frequently, they have a tendency to cause the person who is experiencing them a great deal of concern and embarrassment. This in turn, makes the stress factor worse for the person who is plagued with tics. In many cases, the occurrence of these unusual movements are not able to be controlled and the mere act of even trying to suppress them only makes the situation worse.
3. Waiting Before Treating
The irregular course of this problem in the early stages, makes waiting a good choice. Unfortunately, waiting may also make it very hard to assess the person’s response to any type of medication that my be prescribed for this disorder. The variation in the amounts and times of the tics’ occurrences may be the hardest part of assessing when someone is on medication for this since these occurrences seem to occur randomly for each person affected.
4. Medications for Control
The good news is that there are various types of medications used to control or calm the tic or hyperactive behavior from occurring. New medications that can be place on your skin via a patch, with the medication already on it, allows for a sustained release action to help control the physical behavior. An advantage of this is that you need only to replace it on a weekly basis. The name of this medication is Clonidine (Catapress), and it acts by calming the hyperactive behavior seen when tics are present and may improve attention span and school performance in children.
5. Alternative Therapies and Treatments
Another alternative type of therapy used in the treatment of most tics includes psychotherapy. Even though motor tics are not the result of psychological problems, psychotherapy helps with the emotional and social problems that accompany this problem. Coping with the stigmas associated with motor tics can happen using this type of counseling and support groups, which help to bring awareness of the problem to everyone affected by it.
