Help understanding diagnosis: Overactive Autonomic Nervous System due to Adrenaline

[C85]

Hi,

I have been diagnosed with an overactive autonomic nervous system - a problem somehow linked with my adrenal system.  I went to a very experienced and respected neurologist who diagnosed me but was not very good at describing my condition.  I haven't been able to find much information online so I am hoping someone can describe it to me.  I am especially interested in learning what physiological processes are causing the symptoms, and what sort of general prognosis I might expect.  Is this curable or only manageable?  Does it get worse?  The doctor was vague.  I have taken a good deal of college biology and human phys classes so it's okay to give a technical description.  I'll let you know if there's something I don't understand.

Medical history:

I am a white 23 y/o male with no prior history of drugs, health problems, head injuries, surgeries, allergies, etc.  I am 6'5" 205lbs and run 30 min. daily.  I would drink the occasional cup of coffee, and drank socially.  I have ADD and have had depression in the past.  My mother and sister have anxiety disorders, and my father has had panic attacks.  There is a history of alcoholism on both sides of my family.  My grandfather died of skin cancer.  Last year I had waking sedation for a colonoscopy.  I was diagnosed two years ago with tarsal-tunnel syndrome in both feet, presumably because I had been doing a lot of distance running.  A neurologist did a nerve conduction test and found I had a problem with both plantar nerves.  Everything else was normal.  I have been under a great deal of work-related stress for the last year.

The symptoms:

Ten months ago I started taking Concerta to treat ADD (I had tried many ADD meds at age 14 but had never stuck to one for longer than a month because I was uncomfortable about the idea of medicating).  Concerta was my first real med in about 9 years, and the psychiatrist worked me up to 72mg.  I was on it for about 3 months or so.  After the 3rd month, I noticed my hair starting to fall out at a faster rate.  Worried, I stopped the meds in January..  Shortly thereafter, I noticed a slight tremor in my hands when I tried to hold them very still.  My hands had always been rock steady.  I saw my GP and she did bloodwork and some reflex tests and diagnosed a familiar tremor.

About a month later the tremor had started to subside and I noticed my hair had stopped falling out.  I began to notice tics.  It started with my thumb.  Just sitting there, resting, it would twitch in hard as if to grab something.  No cramping or pain, just annoying and worrisome.  Soon, I noticed it in my quad and then in individual toes and then in my lower calves, eyelids, and weird little foot muscles.  The thumb twitches mostly went away, but I was left with the leg twitching and the occasional little-finger twitch.  The twitches are at a random rate and occur in random muscles for up to three days although they sometimes just twitch once and stop.  I have rare twitching in upper body and torso muscles like lats, bis, stomach muscles etc, but this is much less common.  Sometimes I will go a day with almost no twitching at all.  Sometimes its non-stop.

The twitches seemed to get slightly more frequent over time and I began to get worried.  My anxiety became increasingly worse and I became fixated on the twitching, increasingly convinced that I was developing ALS or something.  This is unusual for me because I am not an anxious person, although my sister and my mother both suffer from anxiety disorders and my father has had panic attacks.  By about a month ago, I began waking up in the middle of the night with what felt like panic attacks.  High anxiety, profuse sweating, pounding heart, knot in chest.  I assumed that's what they were.  They would last for two or three hours.  This convinced me to finally see a neurologist, which I did about three weeks ago.

The neurologist looked at the bloodwork from my tremor test with the GP, the results of a recent (4 months) physical, and the nerve-conduction test. He then did all sorts of nerve response tests with a hammer and a rolling spike wheel, looked into my eyes with a scope, and had me flex my quad hard for a while so he could look for signs of ALS.  I passed all the tests (of course nothing was twitching at the time... like when you finally bring your car into the shop and that noise it was making suddenly stops).

The doctor then timed me putting pegs into a board with either hand and flipping my hand over and back repeatedly on the desk as fast as I could.  Apparently I didn't do as well on these tests and my left hand was a fair degree slower.

The doctor said he could rule out any of the real bad problems such as ALS and Parkinsons, and almost completely rule out MS, though to do so 100% for MS would require a contrast MRI.  I have not had cramping or any of the pain that seems to be associated with MS.

He diagnosed me with an "overactive autonomic nervous system associated with adrenaline".  He said that my sympathetic nervous system was too revved-up.  He then talked about secondary messengers sending signals into the synapse and a positive-feedback system that would lead the problem to spiral over time. I didn't catch it all - but that was part of the sort of explanation I am looking for here (with more detail).

He said I needed to "relax", avoid stimulants, and try to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.  "Five years ago, we might have put you on beta-blockers" he said, "but we've found that yoga or meditation can be very effective at stimulating the parasympathetic system".  He recommended that I try these activities.

I didn't really come away with a good idea of what exactly is going on in my body, or how they explain my symptoms.  I also am unclear as to whether this is something I can expect to live with , or whether it can be cured.  

I began to meditate 20 minutes per day, and this (or just the knowledge that I was not dying) seemed to help me get the panic attacks under control within a week and a half.  However, the ticks have continued and if anything gotten worse.  I had another panic attack last night, although I drank, and drinking more than a few glasses of beer seems to trigger the attacks after four or five hours of sleep (another effect I would love to understand).  Because the twitches are continuing unabated and I don't really have an understanding of the condition or what to expect from it, I have wondered if I should get a second opinion. However, the neurologist I went to was very competent, so I'm hoping if I can understand better, then I will become more comfortable with the diagnosis and better able to do what I need to do to treat the condition.

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide me!