Essential Tremor vs. Resting Tremor
Question: The neurologist diagnosed me with “essential tremors.” Don’t know why they call them “essential” because the shaking stops when I use my hands.
Dr. Bruno’s Response:
Essential tremor is when your hand or hands shake when you're using them to do something, like hold a cup. It is the “opposite” of
Resting tremor, your hand(s) shaking when they’re at rest and a symptom of Parkinson’s disease.
Essential tremor is not the same as muscle "stuttering" in polio survivors. When you’re asked to push against someone’s hands during a manual muscle test, easily fatigued polio-damaged motor neurons can misfire and cause a muscle to rhythmically turn on and off. This misfiring is often confused with an essential tremor, but it’s not. Misfiring happens in the spinal cord and essential (and resting) tremor comes from the brain.
Incorrectly diagnosing essential tremor in polio survivors not only overlooks underlying muscle weakness but often leads to the prescription of a beta blocker (like propranolol) that is a cause of increased fatigue in polio survivors and should be avoided.