Sunday, October 16, 2005

Tics, Tourettes Syndrome, and Magnesium Deficiency

I just added a new page to my Connective Tissue Disorder site on tics. My sons have mentioned kids at school with odd tics, eye blinking and assorted involuntary movements. So it prompted me to write about my own experiences with one of my children and facial tics. For a while, when one of my sons was around four years old, he had facial tics and weird eye blinking that was getting worse and worse. I was very worried he was going to end up diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome. I ended up finding out that tics could be caused by a magnesium deficiency. So we changed his diet to get more magnesium and within a few days he was fine. I see so many people these days with facial tics and other involuntary movements and I do wonder if some of them might also be helped my some relatively simple diet changes. In my sons case I think one of the main culprits was that I thought I was helping my kids by giving them multivitamins and fortified foods. However, it turns out that many fortified foods do not contain magnesium, and to make matters worse, they often contain magnesium antagonists. So add that kind of a diet to a family history of issues with magnesium deficiency and the diet I thought was healthy for my kids was actually causing them more harm than good.