And as Mihok's success in the spotlight-both as an actor and a hip-hop musician-illustrates, people with Tourette's can not only manage their disorder but also channel it in productive ways. This lifelong disorder has no cure, but like many people with the condition, Mihok found that his symptoms improved in his late teens and twenties. "What hurts most is that you're doing things that can take away from somebody else's experience-like watching a movie. "You're born with a problem that draws attention when that's the last thing you want," Mihok says. (Only 10.8 percent of those with Tourette's report experiencing coprolalia, according to a 2015 study in Clinical Pediatrics.) At age 12, he had a brief bout of coprolalia, outbursts of inappropriate or offensive words that people often associate with the syndrome. He's had vocal tics like grunting, barking, throat clearing, saying words or phrases, and sometimes repeating others' words. Over the course of his life, Mihok has experienced the full range of typical symptoms, including blinking, grimacing, head jerks, and shoulder shrugs-as well as actions that may appear purposeful, such as jumping, sniffing objects, or touching them. Rather, current evidence suggests that Tourette's is caused by changes in a variety of genes, and environmental factors are likely also." "Despite numerous studies in multigenerational families, a single major gene has not been identified. "Although in many disorders the precise gene is known, that's not the case here," says Harvey Singer, MD, FAAN, professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The exact heritability of Tourette syndrome is poorly understood. Dash Mihok in 1988 with his two older sisters, both of whom also have Tourette syndrome. It often runs in families, with a history of tics occurring in about half of patients. In the United States, one in 100 people may have milder symptoms and about 200,000 have a severe form of Tourette's, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Tourette syndrome typically is diagnosed in childhood. "It's far more common in boys, so they had all been waiting for that shoe to drop," Mihok says. The family suspected Mihok's father had it as well, though he'd never been diagnosed. "She burst into tears." Mihok's two older sisters, 10 and 13 at the time, had already been diagnosed with Tourette syndrome. "She had been praying it wouldn't happen," Mihok says. His mother wasn't surprised when she heard. "I couldn't stop doing it." Dash Mihok says playing drums as a child helped him manage Tourette's and fall in love with music. "We were trying to be still, but I had an urge to whip my hair around my head," Mihok, now 45, recalls. His first symptoms appeared when he was 6 during a karate class in the building where he lived with his actor parents in New York's Greenwich Village. Mihok has Tourette syndrome, a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by motor and vocal tics. He's afraid he'll bother other viewers with his tics. It's not that he's worried about being recognized. "If I go, I sit at the back so fewer people will notice me," he says. Despite years in front of the camera-he had his breakout role as Benvolio Montague in director Baz Luhrmann's 1996 adaptation of Romeo + Juliet, and he currently plays Brendan "Bunchy" Donovan on the Showtime series Ray Donovan-Mihok dreads movie theaters. Actor Dash Mihok on How Tourette Syndrome Shaped His CareerÄash Mihok doesn't like going to the movies.
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