Tourettes Syndrome
By Henry Bechok
What is Tourettes?
Tourettes is a syndrome that affects the central nervous system and causes motor and vocal tics. Tics can range from swearing to just sniffing to moving your head up and down.
Who Has Tourettes?
Tourettes mostly affects children at a young age, about 1 in 360 middle school aged kids have this condition. It is 3 times more common in boys than girls, and can affect any ethnicity.
Body System Affected by TS
Tourette Syndrom (TS) cause tics in the body's central nervous system. The nervous system works off of small neurons, the system depends on them. The neurons make connections with each other which affects the way we think, behave, and move. Tourettes is caused when the neurons aren't working, they send the wrong signals so you do sudden movements that you don't want to do.
Tics can be caused by stress, it isn’t always caused by your nervous system.
- Brain abnormality can be a part of tics occurring.
How does this condition arise?
Tourettes is believed to be a genetic disorder. You are more likely to have TS if you have a family member with it. This condition usually happens in your childhood years.
Tourette's Syndrome - Life With Tourette's
Diagnosis
The syndrome is very difficult to diagnose, many kids wait a long time to get a proper diagnosis. Some people take medicine that cause tics so doctors do a lot research and study to diagnose someone with TS. Doctors usually look at the family’s medical history before they diagnose someone with TS, they also check their signs and symptoms.
Signs and Symptoms
The first symptoms usually happen in your head and neck area and progress to your muscles, this is when motor tics are developed.
It might be hard to focus and or pay attention in class.
The most common symptom is the presence of tics.
The tics can be harmful sometimes such as head banging.
- Symptoms can be mild or severe.
Treatment
There is simply no treatment for Tourettes. Although there are some medicines that can help prevent tics but, they might have some bad side effects. There is not medicine that can keep Tourettes away. Tourettes is not contagious so you cannot pass it on from a cough or sneeze.
Prognosis
TS is not a fatal condition so you cannot die from it, Tourettes doesn’t limit the amount of activities you can do such as sports, singing and dancing. TS may go away after a while but it cannot be cured.