I don't have anxiety attacks but often my fingers tremble - in fact they do
most of the time. My hands have always shaken though, it's part of me. My
father's did too.

Why does it bother you that people notice? In fact, how are you so sure that
people DO notice? And if they do, so what? If you noticed that people's
hands were shaking would you think any less of them?

It doesn't affect my personal or public life, I still demonstrate in public
and make a point of apologising, laughing, for my tremor. Nobody to date has
been concerned about it.

Perhaps not dismissive, perhaps s/he thinks that it's not as important as
keeping the seizures under control - which is isn't.

If you didn't have the tremors perhaps you might be conscious of something
else which made you less than perfect - your height, weight, skin, hair,
shape of legs or many other things which are difficult to change and don't
matter in the Great Scheme of things. Who do you know who is perfect? Who
doesn't have some real or perceived problem?

I know I sound hard but really, a tremor is not important. A friend of mine
is a Commodore in the Royal Navy. He can't hold a cup and saucer without it
chattering all the time. It hasn't stopped him achieving high rank nor
enjoying his life. He doesn't know what causes it, he's always had it, it's
part of him, like my grey eyes are part of me.

<snip>

It IS. I think that no illness or condition has one rigid set of symptoms,
everything has characteristic symptoms but they're not necessarily all there
at the same time and there well may be others which manifest themselves in
some people and not others.

Last night a daughter telephoned to ask me to look on the web for acorn
poisoning in cattle, her vet suspects that a calf might be suffering from
it. I found lots of very good sites - mostly American - and there were very
few symptoms or treatments in common. The only one sure thing was the
prognosis - death. And the only sure diagnosis of the condition is by
autopsy.

Your tremor isn't going to kill you. If you let it worry you your *quality*
of life will suffer. It's up to you to accept this minor symptom and
concentrate on living happily - and being pleased that you're seizure free.

But you're alive! And will be for a long time, I hope. Enjoy it!

I've had some pretty unpleasant side effects from my cancer treatment, one
is a permanent and painful legacy. But hey, while I hurt (and tremble!) I
LIVE!

I wonder if you will appreciate what I've said ... I'm sorry if you don't,
it was very well meant.

Hugs,

Mary

Your description of the tremors sounds like a drug side-effect to me and
you'll find it at
http://medguides.medicines.org.uk/displaypage.aspx?t=medicine&i=47
further down the page.

Are you saying that you have had the tremors only since you started taking
Vigabatrin?  If so, it's unfortunate that your consultant isn't taking it
seriously and switching you to a different AED.

Bob

Anxiety is touted to be treated by phytic acid .. natural iron binder /
chelator .. and iron is shown to be involved in epilepsy ..

Acta Med Okayama. 2004 Jun;58(3):111-8. Related Articles, Links  

Natural antioxidants may prevent posttraumatic epilepsy: a proposal based on
experimental animal studies.

Mori A, Yokoi I, Noda Y, Willmore LJ.

Okayama University, Okayama 700 8558, Japan. dr-mori@f3.dion.ne.jp

Head injury or hemorrhagic cortical infarction results in extravasation of
blood and breakdown of red blood cells and hemoglobin. Iron liberated from
hemoglobin, and hemoglobin itself, are associated with the generation of
reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). ROS and RNS
have been demonstrated to be involved in the mechanism of seizures induced by
iron ions in the rat brain, an experimental animal model for posttraumatic
epilepsy (PTE). ROS are responsible for the induction for peroxidation of
neural lipids, i.e., an injury of neuronal membranes, and also could induce
disorders in the excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters. Antioxidants,
such as a phosphate diester of vitamin E and C (EPC-K1) and antiepileptic
zonisamide, have been known to prevent the epileptogenic focus formation, or to
attenuate seizure activities in the iron-injected rat brain. Natural
antioxidants, such as alpha-tocopherol, and condensed tannins, including
(-)-epigallocatechin and (-)-epigallocatechin-3-O-gallate, adenosine and its
derivative, melatonin, uyaku (Lindera Strychnifolia), fermented papaya
preparations, Gastrodia elata BI., and Guilingji, have been demonstrated to
scavenge ROS and/or RNS and to be prophylactic for the occurrence of epileptic
discharge in the iron-injected rat brain.

PMID: 15471432 [PubMed - in process]

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Who loves ya.
Tom