The Experience Miracles Podcast

Q&A: Why Motor Tics Happen – And How to Help

Feb 28, 2025

Motor Tics in Children: Root Causes, Nervous System Triggers, and Drug-Free Recovery

Episode 82, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: February 28, 2025 | Duration: 39 min

Key Takeaways

  • Motor tics in children are not random or idiopathic, they are rooted in nervous system dysfunction, specifically subluxation that shifts the nervous system into sympathetic dominance and disrupts brain-body motor coordination.
  • The most common underlying cause of motor tics is birth trauma (forceps, vacuum, C-section, cord complications), which may not produce visible tics until age 7–12 when a growth spurt, infection, or chemical exposure acts as a triggering stressor.
  • Three neurological mechanisms drive motor tics: sympathetic overdrive (too much fight-or-flight activation), disrupted brain-body communication (the cerebellum and brainstem can’t coordinate smooth motor output), and vagus nerve dysfunction (impaired parasympathetic regulation and gut-brain connection).
  • Motor tics are involuntary, the child’s motor system is generating movement to calm an overloaded nervous system through proprioceptive stimulation, which is why tics worsen during stress, illness, and poor sleep.
  • Recovery with Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care is real but nonlinear, Dr. Tony’s own daughter recovered fully from severe motor tics over 18 months, with tics fading progressively after each regression.

What Causes Motor Tics in Children?

Motor tics are involuntary, repetitive movements or vocalizations, eye rolling, neck rolling, throat clearing, teeth grinding, sniffing, or shoulder shrugging, that arise from nervous system dysregulation, not behavioral choice. They are not transient or idiopathic in the way conventional medicine typically frames them. They have an identifiable neurological root.

The neurological foundation is subluxation, tension, fixation, and interference within the upper cervical spine and brainstem, that creates three compounding dysfunctions: sympathetic overload, disrupted neuromotor coordination, and vagus nerve impairment. These three components are present in virtually every child with motor tics, regardless of what initially triggered them.

Common triggers include growth spurts (which lengthen and stress the neurospinal system), acute infections that cause neuroinflammatory cascades, toxic chemical exposures, emotional stress, and PANS/PANDAS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome). But the trigger is not the root cause, it’s the straw that reveals underlying nervous system dysfunction that was often set in place at birth. Addressing that underlying dysfunction, not managing the tics as symptoms, is what produces lasting resolution.

Dr. Tony’s Personal Story: His Daughter’s 18-Month Tic Battle [00:04:00 – 00:11:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Most of you know about my son Oliver, traumatic birth, five to six weeks early, heart-lung bypass, multiple surgeries. He’s a miracle, and Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care transformed his life as an infant. He left the hospital seizure-free with normal MRI and EEGs. We thought that would be our one perfect storm story. We have four kids, Oliver and then three daughters.

A couple years later, my oldest daughter was in second or third grade. At the school they attended at that time, and I say “at that time” intentionally, because what I’m about to describe happened, they took no responsibility for it, and it was awful for my daughter, our family, and many other kids, the gym floor had issues.

The school chose to refinish the gym floors during the school year because they got a discount doing it then instead of during summer. No human should be anywhere near the neurotoxic chemicals involved in floor refinishing without a gas mask. This school did it with kids still inside, in a climate-controlled building where you couldn’t open the windows.

I was traveling, speaking at a seminar in California when it happened. That night, my wife FaceTimed me, alarmed, stressed, and put my daughter on. My daughter was having motor tics of her eyes. Her eyes were no longer symmetrical, rolling in different directions and into the back of her head. Her neck would go into a rolling, spastic lateral flexion tic. Her tongue would tic. She was constantly wiping her mouth and grinding her teeth while her eyes were rolling.

“All of this was around the cervical occipital area, the cranial nerves and upper cervical nerves most sensitive to physical stress, toxic stress, and emotional stress. That’s why when you’re really stressed emotionally, you feel it in your neck and shoulders, at the base of your skull.”

My daughter had a perfect pregnancy, a wonderful birth, had never had an ear infection, had literally never been sick in her life, had never had an antibiotic, had no gut dysbiosis. We live extremely clean. Until that school exposure sent an onslaught of chemicals into her nervous system and created sleep issues, anxiety, and really bad motor tics.

For 18 months, she went from being a wellness patient at our clinic to being our second ever intensive patient, after Oliver. We were adjusting her two, sometimes three times a day to detox her neuromuscular and neuroimmune inflammatory system. We also worked with our functional medicine team on diet, nutrition, and supplementation. But the high dosage and high specificity of neurologically focused adjustments made the difference, because motor tics are neuromotor in their foundation and root cause.

Why Motor Tics Appear in Middle Childhood, The Birth Trauma Connection [00:12:00 – 00:15:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: The most common cause of motor tics, far more overlooked than it should be, is birth trauma: forceps, vacuum extraction, cord wrapped, C-section, induction. That doesn’t mean the infant or toddler is going to have visible tics with their neck, eyes, or vocalization early on. Many do. But for others, the motor tics don’t break through until age 7, 8, 10, or 12.

Medicine calls these “transient tics” or “idiopathic transient tics.” That’s just medical language for “we don’t know what’s causing them, but some kids seem to grow out of them.” They’re not transient. They’re not idiopathic. They have a cause.

The reason birth trauma and growth spurts connect so directly is this: growth spurts create a lengthening of the neurospinal system. That lengthening creates tension, achiness, and soreness, especially in girls, which is also why motor tics are more common in girls. If your child has had growth spurts with sore legs or sore knees, this connects directly to the neurospinal system.

If you think of the spine as the longest bone in the body, which is how it functions, it’s also the most sensitive to physical injuries all the way back at birth. Birth trauma can leave what we call a subluxation: tension, obstruction, and interference within the neck and the transition zones of the spine. It flies under the radar. It doesn’t cause motor tics immediately. But it’s there, and it won’t express itself in this motor way until something creates enough stress, a growth spurt, an infection, a chemical exposure, or a significant emotional trauma.

That’s why they’re not transient or idiopathic. The foundational injury was there at birth. The growth spurt, the sickness, the toxic exposure was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Three Scientific Root Causes of Motor Tics [00:15:00 – 00:24:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: No matter what the perfect storm was for your child, birth trauma plus growth spurts, birth trauma plus infection plus vagus nerve inflammation, what’s happening neurologically from those stressors is the same for every child. There are three components of subluxation that drive motor tics.

Component 1: Sympathetic Dominance [00:16:00 – 00:19:00]

Every single child I have seen with motor tics in our clinic, when we evaluate the function or imbalance of their nervous system, is stuck in sympathetic overdrive. Every single one.

When the nervous system is locked in this sympathetic fight-or-flight response, the neuromuscular system, the motor system, is left in a state of tension and guarding. Think about what happens to you as a parent on extremely stressful days: grinding your teeth in your sleep. That’s a version of sympathetic dominance and motor tic. You’re grinding your teeth because moving the jaw stimulates proprioception, which stimulates the parasympathetic calming side of the nervous system.

That’s exactly what motor tics are doing in your child. The body generates involuntary movement, the tic, to send proprioceptive (mechanoreceptive) input into the cerebellum, brainstem, and brain, because that input is calming. From the outside, a motor tic looks like anything but calming. But neurologically, the child’s body is attempting to regulate an overloaded nervous system.

This is why motor tics get worse when kids are anxious, overwhelmed, overtired, or sick, all of those states deepen sympathetic dominance, and the body responds with more movement to try and counteract it.

“Motor tics are the most stressful, heartbreaking thing to watch. And it’s so confusing because it looks like they’re just clearing their throat, just moving their neck. You think: just stop. But not when your child has subluxation and sympathetic dominance. These involuntary movements are much harder to control than they look.”

Component 2: Disrupted Brain-Body Communication [00:19:00 – 00:21:00]

The cerebellum, the brainstem, and the sensorimotor pathways of the central nervous system are in charge of motor tone, coordinating which muscles need to relax and which need to contract for smooth movement.

When there’s no subluxation, no fixation within the spine causing interference to this brain-to-body, cerebellum-to-body communication, neuromotor coordination is smooth, fast, efficient, and organized. No involuntary movements.

When subluxation is present, it distorts and disrupts this neuromotor coordination. That’s why neurologically focused adjustments produce such direct, observable changes in children with motor tics, the adjustment finds the interference, releases the tension, and restores brain-body communication. The nervous system can then regulate movement without relying on involuntary, excessive, uncoordinated output.

“Motor tics are probably the most obvious example of disrupted brain-body communication directly connected to subluxation. When we restore that communication through our adjustments, the nervous system no longer needs to rely on involuntary, unregulated movements.”

Component 3: Vagus Nerve Dysfunction [00:21:00 – 00:24:00]

The vagus nerve governs parasympathetic rest, digestion, relaxation, and regulation. It’s extremely sensitive to physical misalignment of the upper cervicals, cranial area, and upper and middle thoracic spine, because the vagus nerve exits the brainstem and travels the entire length of that region.

The vagus nerve is also the centerpiece of what’s called the neuroendocrine immune (NEI) pathway, connecting the nervous system, adrenals, thyroid, pituitary, and HPA axis in one integrated regulatory system. When this system is compromised, neuroimmune dysregulation follows.

When the gut is compromised, microbiome imbalance, dysbiosis, inflammatory cascade, the vagus nerve, which is the literal gut-brain connection, is affected. Every conversation about gut-brain connection, microbiome, and neuroinflammation ultimately points back to the vagus nerve.

If this sounds like your child, vagus nerve repair, not just regulation, is the priority. Deep breathing, music therapy, and grounding exercises are regulators. They don’t repair a vagus nerve compromised by birth trauma, toxic exposure, or neuroinflammation. That’s what Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care does differently, it repairs the structural interference that’s impairing vagus nerve function before attempting to regulate it.

The Reality of the Healing Journey [00:24:00 – 00:30:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: For my daughter Addison, it was 18 months. I want to be honest with you, because this podcast doesn’t give you the clouds-part-and-angels-sing version of healing. We give you the truth about how neurological, drug-free, root cause healing really works.

It’s not usually quick. It’s not usually smooth. It’s usually way longer and bumpier than you want. That’s incredibly hard.

Here’s what the journey actually looks like: you start getting your child adjusted. You activate the vagus nerve. You address gut inflammation and diet. You see initial changes, initial clearing, initial calming, and you get excited. And you should, because it’s working.

Then they hit a growth spurt. Or they get sick. Or something stressful happens at school. And you see some blowback. The tics come back. It looks like regression. Most of the time, it’s not regression, it’s just another layer of that onion peeling back.

“Each time the tics came back, they were less severe, they stuck around for less time, and we got through them quicker. There is momentum that you can see, even when it doesn’t feel like it.”

What I want you to know about Addison’s case, which is our family’s relatable case study, is that she is thriving now. The tics are gone. You wouldn’t know she ever had them. And we’ve seen essentially the same story, all the way clear, all the way to the other side of motor tics, without drugs, hundreds of times at our clinic, and tens of thousands of times across the PX Docs network.

The path is: restore brain-body communication, get the nervous system out of sympathetic dominance, activate the vagus nerve, ensure neuromotor tone and coordination is organized and efficient, and address neuroinflammation through an anti-inflammatory diet, targeted supplementation, and essential oils. When you do all of that over time, with a PX doctor guiding the pattern recognition, your child can absolutely get to the other side of motor tics.

Spring Is the Hardest Season for Motor Tics

Dr. Tony Ebel: I want to flag this for families right now: spring is consistently the worst season for motor tics, anxiety, PANDAS, and related conditions. Seasonal transitions stress the immune system. Standardized testing, final exams, and spring sports load up stress for kids. Neuroinflammatory cascades are more likely to be triggered.

PANS/PANDAS, Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome, connects directly to motor tics, and spring is when it tends to surge. We have dedicated PANDAS deep dives coming in the next several episodes, including expert interviews dropping in March and April. If you have a PANS/PANDAS child, stay subscribed, we’re going deep on this.

Frequently Asked Questions

What causes motor tics in children?

Motor tics are caused by nervous system dysregulation, specifically subluxation in the upper cervical spine and brainstem that creates three compounding problems: sympathetic dominance (stuck in fight-or-flight), disrupted brain-body neuromotor communication, and vagus nerve dysfunction. The most common underlying cause is birth trauma from forceps, vacuum extraction, C-section, or induction, which may not produce visible tics until a later stressor (growth spurt, infection, chemical exposure) reveals the existing dysfunction.

Why do motor tics get worse with stress, sickness, or growth spurts?

Motor tics are the nervous system’s attempt to self-regulate an overloaded sympathetic state. When a child is stressed, sick, overtired, or in a growth spurt, sympathetic dominance deepens. The body responds by generating more involuntary movement, the tic, to send proprioceptive signals to the brain that are calming. It’s counterintuitive, but the tic is the body trying to calm itself. More stress means more tics, not because the child is misbehaving, but because the nervous system is working harder to self-regulate.

Are motor tics permanent, or can children recover fully without medication?

Children can and do recover fully from motor tics without medication. Dr. Tony Ebel’s own daughter recovered completely after 18 months of Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, an anti-inflammatory diet, and targeted supplementation. Recovery is typically nonlinear, tics reduce in frequency and severity over time, with periodic flare-ups during growth spurts or illness. Each regression is usually shorter and milder than the last. The PX Docs network has seen tens of thousands of cases resolve through this approach.

What is the connection between motor tics and PANS/PANDAS?

PANS/PANDAS involves an acute neuroinflammatory response, often triggered by strep or other infections, that directly compromises the vagus nerve and neuroimmune regulation. Motor tics are a core symptom for many PANS/PANDAS children because the neuroinflammation compounds the existing subluxation and sympathetic dominance that was already present. Spring is the highest-risk season for PANS/PANDAS flare-ups due to increased infectious load and immune system stress.

Can chiropractic care actually help motor tics?

Yes, and motor tics are one of the most direct examples of a neuromotor condition tied to subluxation and disrupted brain-body communication. Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic adjustments work on three levels simultaneously: calming sympathetic dominance, restoring neuromotor coordination through the cerebellum and brainstem pathways, and activating the vagus nerve for parasympathetic repair. Because the root cause is neurological, neurologically focused adjustments produce direct, measurable changes, tracked through INSiGHT scans throughout the care plan.

How do I find a PX Docs chiropractor who treats motor tics?

Use the PX Docs practitioner directory to find an office near you that uses the PX Docs protocols, INSiGHT scanning technology, and neurologically focused adjusting. Find a PX Docs Office Near You

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