Tic suppression Techniques?!

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I have tourette's too. If I'm in a situation like in an elevator, where I really don't want to tic, I usually take deep breaths and blink my eyes slowly for a few seconds. Rub the area where you feel the need to tic. Then I just let them out when I'm out of the elevator. If your supressing them for a good while, then just go to the bathroom every once and while to let them out.

Now if this neck tic is really bothering you, there's a treatment called Habit Reversal Therapy (HRT). So what you do is, when you feel the need to throw your neck back, do the opposite, so in this case, you would throw your neck forward instead. Soon enough, you'll find that this tic will go away.

I know how you feel, I have alot of painful tics at the moment! Good luck anyway :)

I have TS

Doctors usually prescribe calcium channel blockers or dopamine inhibitors for this.
In the meantime try a magnesium orotate supplement as magnesium is a calcium channel blocker

Jesus go to a doctor before that tick goes to your brian and kills you. Ticks carry a deadly dieasease

You need to go to the doctor about this one. Simply "holding in" tics is not an answer for a chronic tic like this, and if it's causing you physical pain, that's a sign it needs medical attention.

What to expect at the doctor's: he/she will do a physical examination and possibly bloodwork, brain wave tests, or even brain imaging in a scanner.

The doctor may diagnose you with tic disorder, vocal/phonic or motor, or possibly both, possibly chronic, or as having Tourette Syndrome. OK, so the name isn't really important to anyone but the billing people at your insurance company, who love to have complicated names for things....but to the nitty gritty. So if yo have tics, what can you do about it?

Well, you can do relaxation and stress relief techniques, medication, or in unusuallly disabling cases, brain surgery or injections of Botox into affected muscles may help relieve symptoms.

Medications are likely the most commonly used treatment, and come in two major categories: alpha-androgenic agonists (mild blood pressure drugs now used for hyperactivity in ADHD and for Tourette/tics) which may cause sleepiness, headache, irritability, and mood changes, and dopamine blocking medications, called neurolpetics/antipsychotics, (origianlly developed for seirous mental illnes like schizophrenia or psychosis, thus the name), which block dopamine from nerve cells in the brain, and in some cases, significatly improve tics, but these can cause serious side effects incluidng persistent sleepiness, severe weight gain, difficulty thinking clearly, sexual dysfunction, involuntary movements which can become permanent, personality change, neurological toxicity which is life-threatening, diabetes andand heart and liver disease which can lead to organ failure. Other side effects can and do occur, but these are the ones everyon should be aware of before starting an antipsychotic drug, and odds are, your doctor won't have time to tell you all of this, so I am.

The best result found studies showed that antipsychotics relieved tics partially in about 60% of cases they studied. So, even if it does help, you have to be very watchful of it causing harm, because these side effects can be disabling, potentially permanent, or even deadly.

Keep in mind that most of the side effects I have listed are very very rare, but are important to be aware of. the big 3 that almost everyone on antipsychotics gets: sleepiness (sometimes to the point you sleep all day and night for days) weight gain (sometimes up to a third of one's orginal weight) and difficulty thinking. Put these together and you have the basic personality change most people on these drugs have, which is very sleepy, dull-thinking, very hungry and rapidly gaining weight. These are not themselves acutely dangerous, unless one is already overweight, has to drive or operate machinery and/or is required to make quick, important decisions like a rescue worker or doctor. However, chronicly, these side effects can cause more disability than most people are willing to put up with, so many stop the medications (Must be done gradually to prevent withdrawla syndromes which can ge LIFE THREATENING!) and resort again to relaxation and behavioral methods, which can control tics for some of the poeple with tics.

Recently, a technique for controlling tics called habit reversal therapy/cogntive behavioral interventnion for tics has recieved attention in the medical field, a system of strategies in which individuals ar etaught by a therapist ways to minimize their tics and the impact on their quality of life. The efficiency of this is about the same as drug therapy, around 60-70%, give or take a few percentage points.


Tics are belieived to be due to abnormal sorting of motor impulses in teh basal ganglia, a part of the brain deep inside our heads which, well, sorts impulses. In many studies, such as those supporting the use of dopamine blocking antipsychotics in tic disorder, results indicate that people with tics have too much dopamine in their brains, which somehow contributes to the occurence of tics, though how or why, is not yet known. The reason its so hard to treat tics/other brain disorders is because the same parts of the brian that control one thing usually control others too, so it's veyr difficult to create the desired effect without causing unwatned effects as well.

why I know all this: I have disabling tics/tourette myself nad have researched it for over two years.

best advice i have: keep living keep doing what you love, and live with it the best you can and accept it for what it is, just a fact of your life, nothing more or less, which could very well go away osmeday....or if it doesn't you'll be able to keep going just fine.

www.tsa-usa.org

www.ninds.gov

www.wemove.org

yale child study center/tics

There are so many causes for tics, some are pretty severe, you need to get it looked it. You may be causing nerve damage. I'm shocked you haven't seen a doctor about it after dealing with it for a year.

But to answer your question, a lot of anti-anxiety medications and sedatives work well with suppressing tics. Again, this depends on why you're getting them. Some are anxiety related, some occur after nerve damage, Tourrette's, and even Schizophrenia.

Lots of painkillers have sedative effects and muscle relaxants will probably lower the intensity of the tics. There really aren't any over-the-counter medications

See a doctor. Please.