Category: Illness or disabilities
Introduction and description
Torticollis, also known as wry neck, is a 'dystonic' condition, meaning sustained or repetitive muscle contractions result in twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal fixed postures.
In this case torticollis results in an abnormal, asymmetrical head or neck position. The term torticollis is derived from the Latin words tortus for twisted and collum for neck. It is classified as a muscle disease.
Torticollis is a symptom and not a cause, and the causes are those specified under the general headng of muscle diseases - viruses, fungi, bacteria, parasites, toxins including heavy metals, and so on. The list includes simple environmental factors such as cold draughts.
Torticollis with recurrent, but transient contraction of the muscles of the neck and especially of the sternocleidomastoid, is called spasmodic torticollis. Synonyms are "intermittent torticollis", "cervical dystonia" or "idiopathic cervical dystonia".
Spasmodic torticollis is an extremely painful chronic neurological movement disorder causing the neck to involuntarily turn to the left, right, upwards, and/or downwards. Both agonist and antagonist muscles contract simultaneously during dystonic movement. A small number of patients develop the disorder as a result of another disorder or disease, but here we have found a healing method that appears to help cure the condition. See the observations.
The healing method has especial signifiance, as it appears that the current symptom based approach to treating this condition is with botulinum toxin type A.