What is an essential tremor?

Movement Disorder: A chronic progressive neurologic disease that may involve the arms neck chin and voice but rarely the legs. It is present during movement and often with sustained posture and rarely at rest. The disorder is partly genetic. Symptoms increase with advancing age, most prevalent cases are >60 yrs. Initially the tremor may be mild and may not worsen for years.Treatment: beta blockers +/- primidone.

Movement Disorder: Essential tremor is a movement disorder that is characterized by a tremor when you try to do something. This is in contrast to Parkinson's disease, in which patients have a tremor at rest. Parkinson's disease also is marked by slowness of movement and stiffness.

Plain old tremor: "essential" is a bad name. It is used in medicine to describe a condition that "just is", i.e. Not caused by some other underlying disease. Example: "essential hypertension" is high blood pressure that "just is" (i.e. Run of the mill hi bp), not caused by a different disorder. Essential tremor is the common condition that often develops at older ages, of resting tremor usually involving hand.

Hand tremor: Essential means that there is no known cause.

Tremor of aging: It can occur in the wrists/hands or the head and neck (think of kaltheryn hepburn). Although it can cause a lot of problems for patients, it is not associated with a disease that effects someone's lifespan (such as parkinson's). It occurs when one holds the arms out and some with movement, but goes away when resting & supported. (parkinson's tremor is mostly seen when resting & supported.).