My 7 year old daughter has taken focalin xr for 6 mos. and has developed facial and large muscle tics within the last week. Can medicine be the culprit? No history of tic disorder or tourette's in family.
Sydney's mom
Can focalin xr cause facial and large muscle tics?
Question posted by dumasmckenzie on 18 March 2010
Last updated on 10 May 2012 by Anonymous
5 Answers
Inactive
10 May 2012
Hello dumasmckenzie. It might be. I have come across other people mentioning what you have in your question. You might go to the FDA link and leave your comments on your concerns. Regards, pledge
lcwildin
18 Jan 2012
My daughter started taking Focalin XR a year and a half ago, when she was 7. Within 3 months she developed facial, arm and body tics. I quickly associated it with the med, and took her off it. Her Doctor told me the medicine could not cause the tics, but can make them more profound. Yet, she had never exhibited any form of tic prior to use. Since she has been off, they have continued and at times have gotten progressively worse. I am frustrated with trying to find a cause, and personally feel that somehow this medicine created her now diagnosed Tourettes Syndrome. Again, no history or tic disorder in our family either. Has your daughter gotten any better?
jenster01
18 Jan 2012
my 7yr old son since being removed from focalin xr has improved but 4wks after stopping the meds we are noticing he still has facial tics with his eyes. he says his eyes hurt. doctor said this is no longer from the focalin since he has been off the meds for 4wks now. we see his eye doctor this week and i hope to get some answers. i pray this is not from the focalin permanant damage!
kazoo2
9 Feb 2012
Both of my 7 year old twins have ADHD. My daughter was on Vyvanse since the beginning of the school year and about a month ago she started having terrible anxiety. We switched her to Focalin and she's doing really well... so far. My son has been on Focalin since September and he is also doing well in school, but just the the past couple weeks we noticed a tic developing. It took me a while to figure out that was what it was. I thought he was clowning around, but it has gotten progressively worse and now I know it is clearly a tic. I am going to stop the medication to see if it's any better. This is all very upsetting to read. This doesn't go away after the medicatin is stopped???
jenster01
13 Dec 2011
my 7yr old son has been on focalin xr for 5months now and 4days ago we noticed his eyes were developing tics. blinking tightly... his doctor said to stop medicine for 7days to see if this stops. doctor believes this is a delayed reaction to the focalin. (side effect) he said 5to 10 percent of children develop the tics. i will not put him back on medicine. he also takes guanfacine .5 mg 3x day non stimulant.
Zanesmom
14 Dec 2010
My son was on Focalin XR last year for 6 months when he was 7 yrs old and also developed the facial tics. I also know another mother that the same thing happened to her son. I took my son off of the medication and despite pressure from the school, (since last year he was able to focus better while on Focalin and the tics didn't start until school was over) I am opting to find an alternative more natural treatment that can hopefully fix the underlying issue.
I do beleive that the Focalin is what caused the Tics due to the medication doing something to his digestive system that prevented him from processing sugar and carbohydrates correctly causing a yeast build up. When the body has a yeast build up it does not absorb magnesium correctly which leads to a magnesium deficiency that can cause tics. I found this out through some Tourettes websites. After removing him from the Focalin XR I started him on "Yeast Defense" and removed as many carbs and sugar as possible.
I then began giving him a Magnesium supplement and low and behold the Tics finally went away because when I initially took him off of the Focalin the Tics had actually gotten worse.
At this time I am still researching to find a definitive resolution to his inability to focus in school and reading problems. He is not dyslexic and his IQ is normal we already did a full Educational Battery with him. He does have some Some Sensory Processing Disorder symptoms and he was receiving therapy by an OT.
I had him tested by a Visual Optometrist and found he is under 1 % of the population for Binocular Vision and Eye Tracking so this is the problem but the Therapy is not covered by my insurance so back to the drawing board.
I have been researching since and found a Brain Balance Therapy that is not covered by insurance but the founder wrote a very informative book that has detailed information on his theory, checklist to identify, vitamin information, therapy for home, etc. I downloaded the book from amazon the name of it is "Disconnected Kids by Robert Melillo" It is very informative. I have not started the therapies in the book because I just finished reading it.
I am currently giving my son 2 kid multi vitamins twice a day, 2 kid omega gummies twice a day, magnesium and Natures Chi. He is still very low on magnesium even though he does not have the tics.
I took him to get a TAO massage (1 hr) and she was very concerned his muscles would not relax for the entire hour though he swears he loved it. It did relax him somehow I suppose. I am now looking at the muscle tension aspect (nervous system) I found a supplement today called Nerve Shield. He took the first one tonight before bed. He is also a toe walker... you know all the pressure points in the feet for the eyes and the brain are in the Toe Area... I really do think our kids bodies are trying to give us hints to what's going on.
I also took him to an natural herb place for the vitamins and they read his energy points and that is where I found out he still is extreemely low on magnesium and they also verified that he had problems in his digestive tract and the middle top of his brain is weak. Which after researching is the part that relays information from the muscles, nerves etc to the left and right side of the brain and from the left and right side of the brain to everywhere else in the body. The Brain Balance theory is making even more sense now.
So basically my plan now is the vitamins plus the Nerve Shield, Therapy in the book I mentioned and Qigong (stretching exercises for cleansing)that soothes the nevous system and restore mental clarity by harmonizing the right and the left brain.
Though I am spending a ton of time researching and the steps I am taking involve more input that if her were on medication it is worth it. It broke my heart when I saw his tics especially when I knew he did not have them before I put him on the medication. Good Luck with everything and I hope by too long of an answer helped you in some way.
Lolly58
24 Jan 2012
Pls. Let me know if you find something else for focus. We just started our 14year old back on focalinxr today after a three year break. Coming off of it about 8-9 hrs. Later the ticks r back.
someones_angel
7 May 2010
i really don't have an answer to your question but my 10 yr old son has been on focalin xr for about a year. during this time he seems to have developed the ticks part of tourettes. like you there is no history in either side of our family so i looked the medicine up online for side effects and it is possible to develope tourettes with this medicine. we had moved and he was off the medicine for about month, now that he is back on it it seems that the tics have gotten worse. i was recently told to stop the medication immediatley. he also started to have tremors in his hands. here is the link to the web page i went to that has data from the FDA https://www.drugs.com/pro/focalin.html
close to the bottom of the page is Adverse Findings in Clinical Trials with Focalin it said it is rare but it is possible. then a little lower than that is Other reactions include: it is listed there again about tourettes. hope this was helpful. to be honest i dont think i would recomed this medicine if i were a doc.
deanaparks
11 Dec 2011
My son is doing the same thing. Ive taken him off as well do these side effects go away or are they permanent???
lcwildin
18 Jan 2012
That's my concern as well. It has been nearly a year that my daughter has stopped using Focalin XR, and she still has tics as bad as they were when she was taking the medication. Some days are absolutely horrible, other days... you would never notice. Not a lot of help from the medical community on the matter either. But again, she never had any tic what so ever prior to taking the med.
Lolly58
24 Jan 2012
Our son tried vyvance and focalin at different times about 3 + years ago and got bad tics. We tried lowering the doses and the tics always returned. Facial/blinking eys and arms and hands constantly being stretched out. The last 3 years we have had him on ability and intuniv. Huge struggle in school with focus. Recently took him off of the ability, due to anger issues and weight gain. Today (at age 14) we started him back on 10mg. Of focalin with 2mg. Intuniv. Had a great day with focus 9 hours later this evening got the arm tics back. We are cutting the focalin to half(5mg) tomorrow to see if the tics return. The problem with these tics are so hard to deal with for our kids and their peers are not always kind. I do believe the tics started when he first started taking the stimulants. The years off of the stimulants still suffers from mild tics but usually seems to be caused by frustration when doing homework.
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focalin, focalin xr, tic disorder
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