October 23, 2008
LIVESTRONG.COM
Tourette's syndrome is an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by motor and phonic tics. Learn about the different causes of, symptoms of, and treatments for Tourette Syndrome in this video.
Dr. Davis is one of San Francisco's finest house call specialist physicians and has been providing house calls and office visits to the Bay Area since 2005. His practice is built upon the philosophy that excellent customer service and excellent patient care go together. Dr. Davis works out of a charming 100-year-old Victorian home, and he believes that healing should begin when you walk in the door. While trained in modern medicine, Dr. Davis also has a deep appreciation of cultural anthropology, the natural sciences, and philosophy all of which he integrates with his medical practice. Dr. Davis received his MD from the University of Florida and completed his Family Practice residency at Lehigh Valley Family Practice. He has also lived, studied, and traveled abroad extensively, including for one year in Beijing, China, where he studied and practiced the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture.
JUSTIN C. K. DAVIS, MD: Hi, I am Dr. Justin Davis. Today, I would like to tell you about a condition called Tourette syndrome. Tourette syndrome is actually a neurologic disease first described in the 1880s by a French neurologist, Dr. Tourette, which causes unwanted motor, meaning movement, tics; or vocal, meaning voice, tics. A tic means a sudden outburst or a sudden movement and these, in Tourette syndrome, are always unwanted. Tics can be minor or severe but all have one thing in common and that is that the person expressing them does not want to do it. They have no control over it and often simply cannot help themselves and cannot help what they are expressing. As you can imagine for the bystander that is not familiar with Tourette syndrome, this can sometimes be very confusing or it may even make you angry if you feel that the person with Tourette is directing something towards you. And likewise, for the person with the Tourette syndrome, it is often very frustrating, embarrassing, or debilitating that they have difficulty controlling these outburst of either movement or vocalizations. Sometimes, people affected by Tourette syndrome will even try to disguise some of these movements or vocalizations into making them into something else. Now, Tourette syndrome usually presents during childhood often between the ages of 7 to 10 years old and is much more common about four times more common in boys than in girls. Sometimes Tourette syndrome will just present very minorly, like an unwanted little facial movement or a yawn and it may always stay like this or often it will actually progress and get worse as the person ages. Sometimes, however, the opposite happens and someone with Tourette as a child will actually grow out of it. There is really no way to predict this and we do not know exactly what causes Tourette syndrome. Treatment is really based around trying to understand the problem better, trying to help the person with Tourette syndrome understand this and be able to deal with it. So often, psychological counseling and teaching them how to deal with their difference is very important. Now, there are some medicines that are used to help sometimes the person with Tourette syndrome to be able to better control or manage their tics but these have only limited amount of successfulness and sometimes you simply just can't control the tic and the side effects of the medicine may be actually worse than the tic itself. As far as prevention goes, because we do not really know what causes this neurologic disease, there is not a true prevention but what is important is to recognize it early so that particularly if it is a young child, they can begin to understand their differences early on, helping the family to understand also how their child is different.
Member Comments
by roble on November 14, 2008 at 6:17 PM
Dear Dr. Davis
I give value and respect to your integral approach to medicine including biological science, social sciences and oriental acupunture. I have a son -31 years old- who suffers from tourette and coprolalia. No more than two months ago he received two sessions with an acupunturist in San Jose, but no benefits were perceived by him. I wonder if you have applied acupunture to tourette's pacients and if so with what results.. Thanks in advance for your answer. Luis.