Calming the Plague of Tics

In this engaging video, the jovial DrPoodle explains how YouTube's "Tourette's Blocking System" calms his tics each time he makes a video. He's grateful to YouTube for actually changing his life. For most of us it's an entertaining distraction. For him, it's a highly anticipated 10-minute relief. I imagine it must work because of the concentration involved much as surgery did - or flying a plane - for the surgeon with Tourette syndrome in Oliver Sacks's, An Anthropologist on Mars.

I'm reading Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn, which features the Tourettic detective, Lionel Essrog, and I wondered if YouTube features any documentary clips about the disorder. It does, but the videos contributed by individual people are often more compelling.

Related:

• Documentary about kids with Tourette's
• Excerpt from a 20/20 piece on surgery for Tourette's sufferers
  
• David Sedaris wrestles with his own urges in "A Plague of Tics" - Sedaris apparently claims his juvenile Tourette's went away when he started smoking.
• Wikipedia entry on Tourette Syndrome