A while back, I had noticed that my tremor had returned to particularly my right hand. This was especially noticed while holding a cup of coffee, or even later at rest after setting down the cup. Red flag, I know- at rest tremor can usually mean Parkinson’s and that does concern me. And, I have to admit, the possibility I have MS still is a concern too. So many overlapping symptoms, how do you pick what is right, or what to ignore? Is there a doctor in the house? Seriously, if there is and you would like to add your comments- or email me?
You might ask why I do not ask my own doctor, and if that concerns you- I will say “been there, done that, where is my t-shirt? “ Doctors I have run in to either do not know much about this, or are not willing to say what they really think once a test comes back. Besides that, the days of my good insurance coverage are done. My current insurance is poor to say the least, but I have to have something, don’t I?
Back to the tremor, this seems to come and go just like the twitches and- well, I was going to say my strength, but recently my strength has failed to return as it had been. I must be lazy. You know, I was just on a site NeuroTalk Support Groups where I noticed a MS sufferer talking of fatigue that got worse at the end of the day, or worse when stressed and made others suggest that she was lazy. I have gotten that too, from doctors. This is another reason I seem to not value what they think about my condition at this point. Anyway, as I was saying about tremor, it has come and gone.
First, I thought that Propranolol was helping, but no matter how I increased the dose, tremor would still break through. Then, when I dropped that I thought it had been zapped by magnesium. That worked at first and also seemed to increase my strength. Now that has stopped also. What now? Well, a couple of weeks ago during my tremor increase; I noticed pain at the side of my neck. I thought, here we go again. I thought of breaking into my prednisone stash but it is limited. I decided to first try DHEA (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehydroepiandrosterone). So far, I have seen the pain in my neck disappear first, and rapidly following my hand tremor. Why? Who knows? It is probably only a coincidence. But my arms also shake less when I use them. None of it makes any sense.
I have had a tremor inmy right hand for about a year, mainly resting that increases with excercise and stress. I am 49 and have always been a fitness person. I hurt my back doing seated pully rows and aggravated it further one day at a batting cage hitting balls for about an hour, tremor to show upp after that. I also have a decreased ability to strum and pick my guitar, feels like my hand won't do what my brain is telling it to do (not like it used to.) I'm going to try DHEA since I do not have health insurance, any ideas?
ReplyDeleteJim
Portland OR
Hi-
ReplyDeleteI might be worried a bit if it were only a resting tremor. That could be sign of other things like Parkinson’s and if you can see a doctor, you should have them check that. But what you describe sounds similar to me in many ways. The tremor I have increases with stress or exercise. There are times I am aware of it at other times, but I feel it is more of a response to gravity at those times, like trying to hold an object like a cup of coffee still.
I had been a guitar player of a sort previous to all this and I had trouble continuing because it felt like my hands were no longer coordinated. As slow as my right hand did the picking, my left hand could not keep up with easy chord changes. And some of the easy changes were a bit difficult to make because my fingers no longer went to the correct positions- they were close, but close does not work in music.
I tried DHEA for a while, but I want to caution you that even if it is available in health food stores, it is not regulated and could contain other things that while they may not be harmful, they may decrease amount of DHEA. Also, DHEA is not a steroid. But as far as the body is concerned it reacts to it as if it is a steroid. This may be reason for concern later and probably is a reason the FDA had banned DHEA a while back.
I had some good results after starting a magnesium supplement. I think it is still helping, but it is not as noticeable now as it was earlier on.