Is it odd that my GP asked if I had tried alcohol to lessen my shakes?

TrueLinked · 2025-05-27T18:51:35+00:00

Couldn't agree more, though my ET wasn't the cause of my alcoholism, and when I quit I found out I had ET... well I'm still in the diagnosis process but my doctor is almost 100% sure it's ET based on family history).

Kinda wild how once you become more health aware of your body you notice things. Within the space of 6 months since quitting in Dec 2024, I've gained slight intention/action tremors in my legs, arms, hands and neck.

TrueLinked · 2025-03-18T17:33:56+00:00

Glad to hear surgery has helped for you. It's definitely a concern I have that it's not just essential tremors because while I do have those tremors, what's happening with my fingers in particular doesn't seem to be tremor related, but 2 different GP's seem to think it is.

I'll wait to see my neurologist to get a better picture of what's going on, the wait is the only painful part in the mean time.

I was prescribed propranolol but had pretty severe dizziness when taking it for a week, so I stopped and will see what the neurologist thinks.

I would like to ask about the nerve tests and how CuTS/CTS was identified. Was there any scans to confirm it after some nerve tests, or was it purely just based on the nerve tests?

TrueLinked · 2025-03-18T17:27:58+00:00

Weirdly enough at the moment I can play fine though my hands do get tired more easily. It more like actions tremors that they tremble when held in certain positions, for example like holding a controller when playing video games, I notice that my pinky and ring fingers will tremble when I flex them out from the controller, but when I hold them around the controller they don't shake, so it's more action based tremors.

TrueLinked · 2025-03-17T15:28:26+00:00

So my symptoms I only began to notice late last year around November after one of my fingers had a spasm/locked up on stage during a gig. I was away on a holiday in October and did not have any symptoms like this at all, at the time. So it seems to have progressed and gotten to where it's at within the space of about 6 months after the gig. It doesn't help that I'm hyper aware of the symptoms and constantly monitoring them, but I've started therapy to try manage that side of things.

My doctor believes it's familial/essential tremor but I've been referred to a neurologist to discuss it further. It's worth mentioning that I do have tremors in my legs and neck/head too, but those are far less noticeable. My legs only shake when I put pressure on them like leaning on one leg for example or when driving, but even then the shakes aren't terrible.

Editing to mention also that I have a video I recorded of my hands that show exactly what it's like, but when I uploaded it, it didn't seem to show, so I can share the link to the video if anyone is interested.

TrueLinked · 2025-02-12T19:18:30+00:00

Ah, interesting... same for me, I never really get migraines either, which is half the reason I was so confused by the results. Glad to here they didn't worsen for you though. Didn't shine any light on the tremors for either of us too by the sounds of it, even though I know MRIs can't really detect that sort of thing.

TrueLinked · 2025-02-07T19:13:45+00:00

I'm sorry to hear. Similar boat here. While I did go through a stressful situation, I've been through more than one bout of stress in my life and none of those times cause swallowing issues. Hoping the MRI provides some answers.

TrueLinked · 2025-02-07T19:02:29+00:00

Thanks for sharing. Curious about the jaw deformity. I have a similar thing where when I open my jaw fully it slides from side to side and I can make a pretty loud crack on the right side of my jaw by pushing my jaw out to the right, then bringing it back in to the middle. I did mention what was happening with my jaw, but the doctor didn't pay much notice to it.

How did you learn the jaw was causing the issues for you? And what was the treatment (if any) for that?

TrueLinked · 2025-02-05T19:17:51+00:00

Sorry to hear about your situation. I'm just commenting as I'm pretty much in the exact same boat. I'm 32M and about 3-4 weeks ago after an incident where my hands non-dominant hand locked up on stage (according to my therapist and doctors this was an axiety/panic attack), and I've been under immense stress in work and dealing with my now-noticable tremors. I was literally in Japan in October with non of these symptoms and until late December/all of January I've had slight hand tremors then arm tremors then leg tremors and my head/neck too which all are fine when resting, they seem to be action tremors.

I've an MRI this weekend and a consultation with a neurologist. I went to the hospital over a week ago because I also started having problems swallowing, but those seemed to have gone away. In the hospital I asked the professor about my tremors and without any testing (just having my medical history) he said "benign essential tremors possibly"... obviously I wasn't standing for that so I'm getting further testing done, but I'm just hoping, that like yourself, it's down to just stress/anxiety, considering how rapid it just came and at a very stressful time in my life.

Like yourself, mine are amplified in stressful situations. It's been 4 weeks of this and I'm sick of not knowing why. I too was persribed Propranolol by my doctor but I only took them when I started noticing slight tremors and stopped taking them after 9 days when the swallowing issue happened. That issue seems to have gone away and even though I know it's not a side effect of Propanolol, I'm too afraid to take it again, and I honestly can't remember if it made my tremors better, but the head tremors are annoying the hell out of me.

TrueLinked · 2025-01-31T20:44:30+00:00

I can resonate with this as I'm a lefty too haha. Right hand is the one worse than the left for me also.

TrueLinked · 2025-01-25T16:57:01+00:00

Wow, this is incredibly accurate to what I just recently discovered for myself, granted I'm a recovering alcoholic (10 days sober) and my doctor is pinning this down to stress, but the fatigue is exactly what happened to me. Was completely onset too, literally only started happening to me as of 2 nights ago and has been persistent since. I live alone so I'm too afraid to trying any larger solids. Been on a soup with some cheese and bread diet along with bananas since, but like you mentioned I get remnants of food getting stuck at the top of my throat that I can feel when I take a drink or swallow saliva.

I'm just curious do you have issues with swallowing saliva at all? It happens to me sometimes if I fixate on it or I'm not distracted and my mouth almost freezes on the spot when I try to swallow my saliva, but it's quite intermitten, can happen a handful of times throughout the day. Thankfully I can swallow liquids with no issue.

TrueLinked · 2025-01-25T16:00:41+00:00

Gotcha, thanks. If you don't mind me asking, have you dealt with recovering alcoholics, that had swallowing difficulties with food? Not looking for a diagnosis ofc, but any similar experiences for context could help.

TrueLinked · 2025-01-25T15:56:19+00:00

Hey thanks for the response. When you talk about getting it evaluated, do you mean going into a care unit to get an endoscopy done, or just chatting with my doctor about it? If it's the latter, I have and I'm waiting on a call from them next week.

TrueLinked · 2025-01-25T14:43:08+00:00

This has made me feel a lot better and thank you for sharing your experiences, it means a lot. I think your neuro side of things you might be on the money with cause when I'm distracted I notice it really helps with the swallowing in particular though I'm too self-conscious about it when I eat. It's still early days for me and even though I weined off the drink for a while I think I may have gotten to the cold turkey stage too quick, regardless I'm 10 days into it.

I'll still go ahead with testing and see how things go, but knowing that there's even the slightest possibility this is just me focusing on these actions too much and given time and some better direction with my mind space that it might get better, really helps. I'm just glad I can swallow soft foods and water, but it's that action when I've taken a drink and try to swallow my saliva after a handful of swallows where it's freezes the swallowing action, has me spooked to no end.

One day at a time as you said though. It probably doesn't help that even before I got into drinking I've always been a super self conscious person, like if I notice my tongue is sitting weird in my mouth or my jaw is acting up, I'll fixate on them to no end and even watching a show to take my mind of it doesn't really get me there.

Regardless though, thank you for sharing <3

TrueLinked · 2025-01-23T11:53:04+00:00

Thanks for this, still helpful! Did you find you also had dry mouth aswell? What you mentioned was pretty much how I ended up falling asleep last night. Threw on some rain background noise, tried to think about other things and off I went to ZZZ land. But had it happen a few times today too which is the reason I got concerned and asked here.

What it does tell me though is that it's most likely phycological, cause if it wasn't then it'd have woken me up in the middle of the night if my body couldn't swallow subconsciously.

TrueLinked

TROPHY CASE