Laura, I do think you are on to something here.

There are a number of recent U.S. studies of low-income children that suggest chronic stress resulting from family instability, poor housing, and violence, can affect long-term health. Children who are exposed to long-term stressors are more likely to develop obesity, hypertension, cardiac problems, diabetes, and asthma as adults than children not so exposed. One such study comes out of Stanford University. And there are other studies that suggest chronic childhood stress can caiuse neurological problems such as anxiety, tics, attention disorders, depression, and bipolar disorder.

Why this happens is not known but some scientists have speculated that chronic childhood stress causes facultative hyperthyroidism which is known to occur in people with PTSD. As to the genetics of stress, the gene MAOB has been under study for its role in stress and bipolar disorder. When the gene is under-active, it seems to have some correlation with bipolar disorder and increased reactivity to stress. MAOB also helps regulate dopamine, and variants of this gene influence the risk of Parkinson's disease.

So it may well be that chronic early stressors, like poverty, community violence, and unstable family situations, contribute as powerfully to the development of YOPD in some PWP as environmental factors do in others. If that's the case, we really do need to be mindful of the value of taking the village to raise not only the happy and health child but also the happy and healthy adult.

Hi tremorgrrrl,

Really? Chronic childhood stress causes tics?
Please do post those studies here if you can.

thanks,
Lara

It isn't just childhood stress we are talking about. We each carry an endocrine load inherited from our pasts going back generations and coded in what is called "epigenetics". This coding is carried by genes which turn themselves on or off based on the sort of environment they are born into.

As a result, we literally carry the "sins of our fathers". When our drunken great grandfather slapped his pregnant spouse, her blood chemistry changed immediately. Some of that breached the placenta and altered the developing child. In a sense, the bruise appeared on our cheek.

There is a cultural analogue as well. If the "village" stood silent we are different people than we would have been had they rallied to her defense.

I assure you that this is not academic. Your endocrine system and its mighty "fight or flight" circuits are formed by things like this.

Which brings us full circle. Both our modern lives and our ancient heritage working together? antagonistically? to affect our health. I utterly agree with this hypothesis yet I find no comfort in it. Maybe I should spend the evening watching reruns of "The Real Housewives of..." after all.

Oh gosh... tremorgrrrl, I hope you had those cites in bookmarks or somewhere and that you didn't spend all that time looking for them for me.

I thank you for very much for posting them, though.

I actually think we're talking semantics in the use of the word "cause".

Stress or emotional issues do not cause a person to get tics/a tic 'disorder'.
Unfortunately, years ago Tics were once called "nervous tics" which really clouded the whole issue.

Many different types of stress (emotional and physical/different illnesses) can, as you suggest, exacerbate tics in some people who already have the tics/a tic 'disorder'. Strangely enough, some people who have tics find that they tic more when relaxed. It's one of those strange things.

I do so appreciate your taking all that effort to post for me.

Lara

Interesting. I guess it could be seen as an ancestral collective unconscious borrowing from Jung. Or it is Samsara (continuous suffering). In Christian faith it is Purgatory. It all makes sense...going back to Greece think of Sisyphus who must live out his days with struggling uphill with that boulder only to have it roll down hill over and over.

There is no comfort, but in a way we are the lucky ones. It's like PD has given us a wake up call that we need to make some serious life changes. It even gives us a built in stress monitor....not that I want it, but stress can strike in worse ways

Laura

Think about it a little more. The genes flip on and off as a reflection of the Past it is true. But that is the pallette that they use to paint the Future as it seems from the Present. What you expect colors what your are. We are not doomed to a particular fate. (OK, so there is the little matter of death but that is an entirely different set of metaphors ).

A woman named Candace Pert was part of the research team at the NIH that discovered the opioid receptor, became disenchanted with the competition within Big Science, and dropped out. In a later lecture, she said something similar to: "We found that we are far more like a flickering flame than a slab of meat."

---------------------------------

Another study found-

"The most important implication of this study is that people with the
same genetic makeup can be in different environments and have different
expression profiles," Idaghdour says. "The same gene can be expressed in
the city but not in a rural place because of the environment. So you
must look at the environment when studying associations between genes
and disease."

The article "A Genomewide Gene Expression Signature of Environmental
Geography in Leukocytes of Moroccan Amazighs" by Youssef Idaghdour and
Greg Gibson, North Carolina State University; John D. Storey, Princeton
University; and Sami J. Jadallah, HRH Prince Sultan International
Foundation for Conservation and Development of Wildlife, Agadir, Morocco
was published April 11, 2008, in PloS Genetics.

Lara:

Thanks for asking. This is undoubtably more than you wanted (and not all of the research is exactly on point) but it is the basis for the linkage between childhood stress and facial and other tics. And to clarify: The research does not state that childhood stress causes tics. It does, however, state that childhood stress can be a cause of tics and certainly can exacerbate tics. And that is consistent with my statements above.

Some of the research:

Bostic JQ, Prince JB. Child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. In: Stern TA, Rosenbaum JF, Fava M, Biederman J, Rauch SL, eds. Massachusetts General Hospital Comprehensive Clinical Psychiatry . 1st ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Mosby Elsevier; 2008:chap 69.

Jankovic J, Lang AE. Movement disorders: Diagnosis and assessment. In: Bradley WG, Daroff RB, Fenichel GM, Jankovic J, eds. Neurology in Clinical Practice . 5th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Butterworth-Heinemann; 2008:chap 23.

Johnston MV. Movement disorders. In: Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 18th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2007:chap 597.

Franklin SA, Walther MR, Woods DW. Behavioral interventions for tic disorders. Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2010;33:641-655.

Also:

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th edition, text revision. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association,2000.

Kurlan, Roger, ed. Handbook of Tourette's Syndrome and Related Tic and Behavioral Disorders. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1993.

Leckman, James. F., and Donald J. Cohen. Tourette's Syndrome Tics, Obsessions, Compulsions: Developmental Psychopathology and Clinical Care. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1999.

Robertson, Mary M., and Simon Baron-Cohen. Tourette Syndrome: The Facts. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Chouinard, Sylvain, and Blair Ford. "Adult onset tic disorders." Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, & Psychiatry (June, 2000): 68.

Evidente, Virgilio G. H., M.D. "Is it a tic or Tourette's?: Clues for differentiating simple from more complex tic disorders." Postgraduate Medicine (October, 2000): 108.

Kurlan, R., M.D., and others. "Prevalence of tics in school-children and association with placement in special education." Neurology (October, 2001): 57.

Marcus, David, M.D., and Roger Kurlan, M.D. "Tic and its disorders." Movement Disorders (August, 2001): 19.

O'Connor, K. P., and others. "Evaluation of a cognitive-behavioural program for the management of chronic tic and habit disorders." Behaviour Research and Therapy (June, 2001): 39.

And psychological features distinguishing obsessive-compulsive and chronic tic disorders" Clinical Psychology Review (June, 2001): 21.