medication

[Luluisaac15]

Any parents with kids that have both ADHD and Tourette’s? What medication worked for you? Worried that stimulants will worsen tics. He tried Intuniv when he was younger and he was very sleepy , all the time .

[Adhdquestion]

For the guanfacine (Intuniv), wondering if he took the extended release (Guanfacine ER) taken at night, which helps reduce sleepiness. That’s the only adhd med I know of that helps treat tics as well. When my son was on guanfacine er he had some side effects but they slowly went away after about a month, including morning sleepiness/sleeping later.

[Luluisaac15 in reply to Adhdquestion]

Thank you. He tried the extended release and even after a few weeks on it he still had negative side effects.

[simplething]

We had good results with just Intunive to a point, but this year we did have to add low-dose stimulant. May I ask how old your child is and what dose of Intunive they were on?

[Luluisaac15 in reply to simplething]

He is 13 now. But 8-9 when he tried the extended release dose.

[Lanego]

12yo daughter with inattentive ADHD and Tourettes.. We tried Jornay(made her anxious and irritable), Strattera(increased her heart rate too much and it was hard for her to sit still). We also tried other stimulants, intuniv, and qelbree but all of them made her tic more. We tried intuniv twice since it is supposed to treat her tics and not make them worse. Ultimately we've had to not do medicine. Our neurologist suggested using whatever ADHD medication that seemed to work for her ADHD and then add other medications to work on the tics but we decided against that approach. She has tried supplements (Mg, fish oil, Olly stress) but none of them have made a significant difference. For what it's worth, my daughter says Olly stress helps her focus a bit more. I've tried them myself and don't notice anything.

[Luluisaac15 in reply to Lanego]

Thank you for your reply. It sounds similar to our journey. We’ve tried different medications with obvious side effects.

[Lanego]

It's such a journey and so frustrating to not be able to treat her ADHD. I've considered getting a coach to help her with time management and organization. For now I'm trying to do that on my own using timers, to do lists, and agendas. Good luck to you and your son.

[Firstrayofthesun]

8 year old son with tics and ADHD. He is taking guanfacine short release, abilify, sertriline and quelbree. Abilify was game changer for his tics.

[simplething]

My son is also 13. We started the Intunive ER at nine years old. He was taking 10 mg at bedtime, but after a few months, we needed to change it to the morning. We never did increase the dose because it was working for him. Then this year in grade 8 as homework was getting more complex and his ability to focus and control is his behavior became more of a problem again at school, he was started on 10 mg of Bifentin. After four months, the dose was increased to 15 mg. We just got back his report card and we can tell the combination of the two meds are helping.

With each med, it take a couple of months to get over the tiredness. He never had any appetite suppression on either but constipation seems to be a slight problem.

I do like my doctors approach of not increasing dosages of meds based on weight recommendations, or pharmaceutical recommendations but rather on parent and child feedback.

One other note, we were going to try increasing the Intunive instead of adding the stimulant but the Intunive has a side effect of low blood pressure so we couldn’t increase the dosage much.