Live data from Hacker News

Why some people suffer from a stutter

bbc.com

111–120 of 128 posts

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#111
post #73

I have a stutter. I went to a speech and language therapist, which helped a little bit. For the longest time I couldn't say words like "Wednesday" (stuttering on the W) or even simple phrases like "Yes sir/ma'am" when at secondary school (I believe this is known as a "block", my mouth just wouldn't work; I froze up). I'm not entirely sure what helped me overcome the problem. If I'm relaxed, my speech is fluent. If I…

> How curious to know that it's all in the brain rather than a psychological cause such as anxiety I'm not sure this model of thinking is fully correct. In a way, it's like saying that muscle cramps are all in the muscle rather than in their lack of hydration or their being overworked. The substance of thought, emotion, and cognition is synapses firing, neurotransmitters transmitting, and neural connections being mad…

Yes, that's true. Clumsy wording on my part, sorry.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#112
post #101
post #34

Have a stutter too, I was in speech therapy from when I was 7, and one of the techniques that worked best was to focus on breathing and relaxation. When I blocked on words, the levels of tension in my body was/is extremely high. Specifically in my diaphragm, when there is tension, my chest is more rigid and the tension in mouth and tongue is so much stronger. So they had me focusing on relaxing my diaphragm which wou…

I was in speech therapy from a young age, too, and breathing helped, but I had to go a bit further than just focusing on breath control. What really flipped the switch for me, after I had breath control down, was elongating the initial sounds of words when I felt a bit unsteady in my speech. This gets a bit complicated for stop consonants, like b or d; luckily, drawing out the sound made when everything is "in positi…

I learned that too! Weird, it is like you have tohave this whole stack in place to perform an action. Not to dissimilar to the the day job.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like something that should be followed up with placebo experiments.

For sure, but how would that be possible with NIH human experimentation guidelines?

Take a bunch of people and remove annatto from the diet of half of them. For the annatto foods or their placebo substitutes, grind up and dye the food so the eater can't distinguish from placebo.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#114

I have a stutter. I went to a speech and language therapist, which helped a little bit. For the longest time I couldn't say words like "Wednesday" (stuttering on the W) or even simple phrases like "Yes sir/ma'am" when at secondary school (I believe this is known as a "block", my mouth just wouldn't work; I froze up). I'm not entirely sure what helped me overcome the problem. If I'm relaxed, my speech is fluent. If I…

> If I'm relaxed, my speech is fluent. Exactly like me. I can say any word, surprisingly in a better way, when I'm alone. I struggle primarily with words starting with T, D like Trajectory, Tutorial, and few more.

Seems intuitive to me. Most things that are at the edge of my ability I can do in relaxed practice but not under stress. Mouth aerobics are just one example.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#115

My young son, now 7 (no stutter), did stutter at age 4 and had some level of anxiety. My wife and I discovered that he has an allergy to annatto, a natural seed used for orange dye & nutty flavor, that triggered the stuttering. The stuttering was likely due to slight inflammation in his brain. In this case, slice of organic American (orange) cheese caused him to stutter within 10 minutes. Then we could tell when he h…

Wow, I stutter, and have forever, and did not consider it an allergy..

My way of treating it, hat, has been successful was psychedelics.

Interesting.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#116

My young son, now 7 (no stutter), did stutter at age 4 and had some level of anxiety. My wife and I discovered that he has an allergy to annatto, a natural seed used for orange dye & nutty flavor, that triggered the stuttering. The stuttering was likely due to slight inflammation in his brain. In this case, slice of organic American (orange) cheese caused him to stutter within 10 minutes. Then we could tell when he h…

Food allergy is one of the reasons I theorize many people find different seemingly unrelated symptoms disappear when either fasting or on a low carbohydrate diet (even things like seizures). It alters your diet so dramatically and greatly reduces the types of processed foods you can eat.

I try to dry fast for 15 - 20 hours 1/day per week. I can't really do that for my son and do not recommend it for most children.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#117
Man, this article is super scary, accurate and hits too close to home.

It's the first time I've ever seen published a link between dopamine and stuttering.

As someone that has ADHD, and stutters - it's simply, wow. Just wow.

>risperidone, olanzapine and lurasidone.

>So Maguire wondered: could blocking dopamine be the answer? Conveniently, many antipsychotic drugs do just that. Over the years, Maguire has conducted small, successful clinical studies with these medications including risperidone, olanzapine and lurasidone. The result: “Your stuttering won’t completely go away, but we can treat it,” he says.

Interesting.

> Ecopipam

Well, a benzo, but I've never heard it before, but it makes total sense, it's ironic, but for me, it works 100% to make me focus, talk, think, be. Ritalin, caffeine, adderal works too, but, it's different.

Wow.

Using Etizolam, Ativan, Valium, works great, for me, wonders, and I don't really become "addicted" to it = there's an immediate threshold where it's effective to where I become tired and sleep. I've read stories about people who abuse them, and my tolerance never escapes the basics medicinal dose which makes it super interesting as well.

So much excitement, answers, questions, in something I just accepted and found natural remedies too over time thinking "oh it's anxiety." oh it's "just my ADHD" oh it's "just me becoming more introverted."

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuroquant imaging filters for MRI are supposed to detect changes like this, but are quite expensive and not readily available. The pediatricians shrugged their shoulders. Functional medicine doctors would be more willing to pursue this approach (they like data). The trick is finding the root cause of the swelling, which is usually an immune response to a protein it does not like and wants to isolate. I am unaware of…

Not entirely relevant so I apologise but your situation reminded me of the "inflamation theory of disesase": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3492709/ "Inflammation has long been a well-known symptom of many infectious diseases, but molecular and epidemiological research increasingly suggests that it is also intimately linked with a broad range of non-infectious diseases, perhaps even all of them"

It's relevant. Mycotoxins (mold produced), and metals can also cause inflammation. In general, it's the immune system trying to sequester or isolate foreign material.

Re: Why some people suffer from a stutter

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey man, hope you don't mind me asking, but what's the problem with telling someone who stutters to slow down? Background: my son is diagnosed with TA, and he has a peculiar speech pattern, not sure if it's a kind of stutter. In my interpretation, he struggles to find the right word, and he goes back to correct the sentences he's speaking. The only advice that I can give him is to slow down and collect his thoughts,…

It's like telling a person having a seizure, just relax man. Or a person with Tourette's syndrome: "try not to say that word man, it doesn't make sense". Normal people stutter when they're anxious or hyped up. But that doesn't mean that stutterers are always anxious or hyped up. It's easier for people to arrive to a conclusion (possibly an invalid one) about a man's suffering, than actually admitting they don't know…

Thanks a lot. Yeah, makes sense that it should be frustrating having somebody who is not familiar with you nor a trained expert with your disorder giving all kinds of advices.

In my case, my son is 6, so even though I encourage him to tell me his thoughts, given his age most of the time is up to me to provide, or at least try to provide, a solution or in this case a coping strategy. I'll definitely do my best to not be pushy about it and avoid unnecessary stress. Thanks a lot for your comment, it certainly helps knowing other perspectives and see that things seem to be working on your end. Best wishes.

Post reply on HN