Description

What is essential tremor? Essential tremor is a movement disorder that causes parts of your body to shake. This kind of shaking isn’t controllable, and you can’t keep yourself from doing it. Essential tremor usually affects your hands and arms but can also affect your head, voice and other body parts. In its advanced stages, this condition can severely disrupt some of the most basic tasks and parts of life, such as eating, drinking and dressing yourself. Many people also struggle with feelings of embarrassment or anxiety about the symptoms of this condition. Who does essential tremor affect? Essential tremor can happen to anyone, though it’s more common as people age. It’s most likely to start between ages 10 and 19 or between 50 and 59. This disorder also tends to run in families and is sometimes called “familial tremor.” How common is essential tremor? Essential tremor is common. Experts estimate that it affects about 1% of all people worldwide, and about 5% of people over age 60. It’s the most common form of tremor and one of the most common movement disorders. How does essential tremor affect my body? Essential tremor causes parts of your body to shake when you try to use them. This is usually a problem when using your hands but can also affect your head, voice and other body parts. Essential tremor is a condition that gets worse slowly, taking years to reach levels where it starts to disrupt a person’s life. In the earlier stages, essential tremor isn’t a problem. Some people may find it makes certain activities harder, but many can compensate. However, as the condition worsens, it can cause problems with fine-detail work and activities, such as handwriting, using eating utensils, sewing or tasks requiring precision. As essential tremor worsens, this condition can have more severe effects. People who have it may not be able to feed themselves or even cook because of how severely their hands shake. Others may not be able to write, dress, bathe or otherwise take care of themselves. Symptoms and Causes What are the symptoms of essential tremor? The key symptom of essential tremor is shaking — usually your hands — when you’re trying to use them. That shaking can take different forms and usually happens under certain circumstances. The forms and circumstances where tremors are likely include: Action tremor: This is a form of essential tremor that happens during actions, such as reaching for an object. Postural tremor: This is shaking that happens when you hold part of your body in a specific pose, such as holding a hand outstretched and keeping it at the same height. Essential tremor almost always affects both sides of your body but often affects one side more than the other. In addition to your hands, tremors can affect other parts of your body such as your head, voice, face and trunk. The tremor itself isn't dangerous, but it can cause problems with everyday activities as the condition worsens. Eventually, people with essential tremor may have trouble with activities such as eating with utensils and drinking from a glass, dressing themselves and writing. Tremor terms When healthcare providers diagnose essential tremor, they analyze the way the tremors happen. Two key components of tremors are their frequency and their amplitude. The following example explains these terms and what they look like in a hand tremor: Amplitude: The amplitude of a tremor is the end-to-end distance your hand travels during a tremor. The larger the distance, the greater the tremor’s amplitude. The tremor amplitude usually increases as the essential tremor progresses and may vary in certain circumstances such as with action or posture. Frequency: Each shake of your hand is one tremor cycle. The frequency of a tremor is how many cycles you have in one second. The international unit for cycles per second is a Hertz (abbreviated Hz). Essential tremor usually causes six to 12 tremor cycles per second, but this usually slows down as tremor amplitude increases and can vary from person to person. What causes essential tremor, and is there anything that triggers it? Experts don’t know exactly why essential tremor happens or if there are triggers that cause them to happen. However, there’s evidence that it happens because of the changes in certain parts of your brain. And while experts don’t know exactly why essential tremor happens, they do know that this condition can run in families. About half of all essential tremor cases are inherited. This condition appears to be an autosomal dominant inherited condition. That means if one parent passes a mutated gene that causes essential tremor to you, there’s about a 50% chance that you’ll inherit the condition. Is essential tremor contagious? Essential tremor isn’t contagious, and you can’t catch it from or spread it to other people. Diagnosis and Tests How is essential tremor diagnosed? Your healthcare provider can diagnose essential tremor based on your symptoms and a neurological examination. There aren’t any tests that can confirm whether or not a person has essential tremor. However, an important part of the diagnostic process is ruling out other conditions that could cause similar symptoms. Ruling out those other conditions may involve blood tests and imaging tests. What tests may be done to diagnose essential tremor? When your healthcare provider suspects essential tremor, they may need to rule out other conditions. The most common and likely tests that help rule out other conditions include: Blood tests (these can help rule out conditions that look like essential tremor, especially thyroid conditions, Wilson’s disease and toxic exposure to metals like lead or manganese). Computerized tomography (CT) scan. Genetic testing. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Positron emission tomography (PET) scan. Management and Treatment How is essential tremor treated, and is there a cure? There’s no cure for essential tremor, but there are ways to treat it. The main treatment options are medications, assistive devices, botulinum toxin, deep brain stimulation and focused ultrasound. Your healthcare provider may recommend deep brain stimulation or focused ultrasound if other treatments aren’t enough to help your tremors. Medication: The most common medications, taken either on their own or in combination, to treat essential tremor are beta-blockers like propranolol and anti-seizure drugs like primidone. Adaptive devices: Many devices have been developed to improve tremor control, such as weighted items, tremor-canceling devices, vibration devices and peripheral nerve stimulation. Botulinum toxin: This involves injection into the tremoring muscles to temporarily weaken the muscles and lessen tremor severity. Deep brain stimulation: This is a surgery to implant a device that delivers electrical impulses to a specific part of your brain. The electrical impulses interrupt the signals that cause essential tremor muscle movements. This can improve tremors on both sides of your body. Focused ultrasound: This procedure uses ultra-high-frequency sound waves focused onto a single point in your brain involved in the production of tremor, destroying the targeted tissue. This destruction can greatly reduce the severity of the tremor and improve hand steadiness. Experts can use focused ultrasounds to treat tremor on both sides of your body. Complications/side effects of treatments The possible complications and side effects of treatments for essential tremor depend on many factors, including the treatments themselves. Your healthcare provider is the best person to tell you what side effects or complications are possible in your specific situation, and what you can do to manage or avoid them. How to take care of myself/manage symptoms? A trained, qualified healthcare provider should be the one to diagnose and treat essential tremor. Essential tremor isn't life-threatening or dangerous, but tremors can also be a part of other conditions, some of which are treatable if caught quickly. It’s important to call your healthcare provider and make an appointment if you start experiencing tremors that you can’t explain. How soon after treatment will I feel better, and how long does it take to recover? The recovery time from the various treatments depends on many factors, especially the treatments themselves. The best source of information about your situation is your healthcare provider because they can consider all the factors and give you information that’s relevant to your specific case and circumstances. Prevention How can I reduce my risk of developing essential tremor or prevent it altogether? Essential tremor happens unpredictably, so you can’t prevent this condition or reduce your risk of developing it.

Key Specification Essential Tremor

Filter tags