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Life's A Twitch! Celebrating 15 years.
1998 - 2018
Life's A Twitch! Celebrating 15 years.

 

Question 4: Robbie is having trouble with his eyes rolling up into his head It was happening allot when he was on nine pills of orap.Then we cut him back to two pills a day and they gradually got better. One of the side effects of orap is unusual eye movement.Robbie feels that the orap is causing this in his eyes and he want's to drop down to 1pill aday.we are letting him try that. We wanted to know if his sinus allergy could play a part in this. Robbie has sinus allergy and is on Flonase nose spray. When his eyes are bothering him can go to bed for awhile and they get better. It seems the last two weeks he has been over at a friends house on the weekend and he is allergic to carpet which makes his sinus bad and by monday night his eyes are bothering him. If you have any suggestions we would like that. L.M., Prince Edward Island, Canada.


For me to give an opinion on sinus allergies and medication side-effects directly wouldn't be responsible of me for this is outside my explicit area of training. I would suggest talking to a medical doctor rather than a doctor (almost!) of psychology about this issue. All I feel I should contribute is the following:

-it is possible that what you are seeing is not a tic but a side-effect of the medication, and that cutting back on the meds caused the change. It is also possible though that the timing was coincidental. Unfortunately neither can be concluded for sure. The reason I say this is because TS naturally waxes and wanes throughout our days, weeks, and months. This is why it is so important for researchers to test many individuals simultaneously on a drug before saying whether it actually causes improvements or not, and certain side effects or not.

-it is very common for TS symptoms to be misperceived as allergies, dry eyes, sore throats, hearing problems, etc. etc.... Oftentimes when a diagnosis of TS has not been made or considered, people are trying to make sense of seemingly bizarre behaviour in a context they can understand ("nice, bright kid........strange behaviour. How can I reconcile these two conflicting observations?").

-it is possible that the sinus allergy, while not CAUSING the eye roll persay, is nevertheless making that tic more likely to come out. What I mean is this: a tic can be exacerbated (increased) by devoting attention to either that particular tic, or the particular area of the body that performs that tic. So for example my mouth stretching tic always gets worse when I

a.) talk a lot about my mouth stretching tic, or

b.) when I am made more aware of my mouth (such as in dry weather when one licks their lips more often to moisten them).

Hence I always do my mouth stretching tic in the winter, because in winter I am more prone to think about my dry mouth, which in turn "fuels" that tic. It is not winter that CAUSES that tic though. In a similar way if Robbie's allergy leads to dry eyes, this increased sensory awareness of his eyes may be triggering that particular tic. If this is the case, then any allergy medication/eye drops etc. that reduce Robbie's attention to his eyes will help minimize the tic (even though, again, this is an indirect fix: the medication/eye-drops aren't "curing" the tic).

-Finally, there is some research evidence that suggests that simply being unwell -- regardless of what the particulars are -- can make tics worse (what doctors would call a "non-specific stress response"). Not feeling well is stressful. Blinking your burning eyes constantly is stressful (and tiring). Both of these factors could be increasing this tic.

I hope this helped.

Dr. Dunc.

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Last updated on March 25, 2022

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