Puteri’s Musings 2

I have a friend who used to have this strange habit of blinking her eyes and scrounging her face. It was distracting to say the least! I thought she had picked up the bad habit from her mother, as suggested by her aunt. This friend seemed to have outgrown the blinking and the face scrounging after she left home and lived away from her mother.

I also know a pastor who frequently clears his throat as he delivers his sermon. I attribute that frequent throat-clearing to nervousness because it does not appear that he has phlegm in his throat that needed clearing!

And then there was this English pastor’s teenaged son that I met many years ago. He had this strange neck movements. I had to try very hard not to stare because I had never met anyone with such strange neck movements! I do not know if he has outgrown these strange neck movements or had these twitches treated as it has been years since I last met him.

I did not realize, back then, that the blinking, the throat clearing and the strange neck movements were facial tics! I had thought that facial tics were limited to uncontrollable facial twitches!

The medical term for facial tics is Tourette Syndrome which is a neurological disorder and the symptoms include, and not limited to, eye blinking, mouth twitches, eye squinting, throat clearing, facial contortion, nose wrinkling and compulsive grunting.

These facial tics can be treated with medication but like most medication there are some side effects that could even be dangerous. There are some parents, however, who claim that the facial tics that their children were suffering from were treated successfully without medication.

I guess the only way to find out is to give the alternative treatment a try. We can’t know unless we are willing to give it a try, now can we?

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