tremors during sleep

[bobito]

I'm a 60 year old men, in excellent health, except for experiencing tremors during sleep that wake me up and have difficulty going  back to sleep.  As I start to fall sleep again, I feel these "rumbleling" (tremors) around my upper body.  I immediately wake up again.  These tremors last for about 10-15 seconds after I wake up.  The first time I experienced this condition was exactly two years ago.  It lasted for about four days and it simply went away.  Except for minor incidents (by "minor" I mean I experience the tremors for about two nights and go away) with no major disruptions in my sleep patters.  Last week, however, I experienced another episode which does not seem to be going away.  The first two nights I simply could not go back to sleep at all.  My body wanted to go back to sleep, but, as I mentioned above, everytime I fell sleep the tremors woke me up.  I'm on my  9th day and there seems to be no sign of letting up. I went to see my doctor on the fourth day--He prescribed Zolpidem, which I have been taken since.  Interestingly enough, even under the influence of the sleeping pill, the tremor wake me up, but they are short-lived since I go back to sleep almost immediately.  My doctor said to take the medicine for about two weeks and essencially placed me on a "wait-and-see" mode.  My concern at this point is "how long can I possobly survived on this medicine.  Does any body "out there" know anything about this condition?  As you can immagine, it is extremely debilitating.  I'm, for my age, a very atheletic man who is the right things, no vices and bikes to work every day--About
twenty miles a day.  Married with two grown children.  My job is very stress-free and very enjoyable.  Any ideas?  Thank you very much.

[mikezzxxyy]

Things are pretty good on my end at this point.  I don't think I've had any tremors for the last week or so - maybe a bit longer.  The closest I've come is waking up feeling some tightness in my neck from the muscles not being entirely relaxed - but no tremors as far as I can tell.  So not perfect but a significant improvement.

There's something with the electrolyte mix that I respond to.  Still not sure why.  As far as I can tell it's not the magnesium carbonate.  I'm now trying magnesium malate because of the malic acid in the mix.  I'll back off the electrolyte mix in the next couple of days and see what happens.  

If it's not the malic acid then I'm drawing a blank as to why it helps which is concerning since I don't have too much left and it's not available anywhere as far as I can tell.

Not sure if I mentioned it before but in the last few weeks I've added maganese and zinc.  Maganese because it's one of the ingredients and zinc because it's something that logically makes sense and I tested on the low side in the past.  I don't think either of those made any difference and I've started to slack off on taking them but I did want to mention it in case anyone can make a connection to either.

I haven't changed anything else so as far as I can tell the answer is in that electrolyte packet.  Doesn't seem like it should be that hard to figure it out from here.

[toby1101]

4 sleep studies here. Two EEG with no findings. I never really slept long enough to tremor, but you would think something would show.

Still good luck with Clonazepam. Doesn't fix anything, but gives relief. Maybe helping with tinnitus.

[mikezzxxyy]

One other thing the dr mentioned yesterday was a sleep study with EEG to rule out any type of seizure disorder.  I don't know if EEG is typical for a sleep study or if this would be a specialized  version.  Conceptually I think that idea makes a lot of sense but I'm personally not going to go down that route at this point but I wanted to pass it along.

It makes logical sense that a sleep study would be a fantastic diagnostic tool for obvious reasons however all of the posts that I've seen talking about sleep studies seem to indicate otherwise.  

You mentioned a clicking sound in your ear - that's interesting because when I lay down to go to sleep I will tend to hear something similar. And I can correlate that clicking to tremors - if I hear more clicking then I'll have more significant tremors that night and vice versa.  Some nights - like last night - it was quiet...and last night was a peaceful night.

To me it sounds like a muscle spasm of some sort related to the workings in the ear somewhere.  So again...I look to electrolytes ;-)  I'm 100% certain of the inner ear "clicking" and tremor relationship.

One other interesting relationship that I think exists (but am not 100% sure) is shaking during exercise & tremors.  For example - holding a plank until failure.  On some days I'll be shaking all over the place almost from the start while others I'll hardly shake at all.  And on days when I'm shakier on plank I believe the night before I had more tremors.  

[bl218]

Definitely interesting. I've had a number of sleep studies to date, but only one during the period that I was experiencing vibrations.  As far as I know, nothing abnormal was picked up in the EEG during my last sleep study.

[mikezzxxyy]

I saw my dr yesterday for a physical (all looks good) and asked him about the ElectroMix.  He felt it was a pretty decent (if not better) all the way around.  When I told him that it appeared to be discontinued he mentioned TriSalt.  It's magnesium carbonate, potassium bicarbnate and calcium carbonate.  I looked at it on Amazon and read the reviews and a number are mentioning alkalizing.  That to me is interesting if only because it puts a totally different spin on electrolytes and why the electrolyte mix seems to work better than other forms of the same minerals.

I remember at one point in time I came across something that got me thinking about acid balance but I don't remember what.  I don't think I went very far down that path.  I have no idea if there is anything to this but when I read the TriSales reviews (alkalizing) and then look at the ElectroMix ingredients it makes me curious.  Almost everything in the ElectroMix is an antacid/alkalizer.

I received my order of magnesium carbonate yesterday - I'll give it a try and post feedback in a few days.

[bl218]

Unfortunately, I'm not doing too well lately. I continue to wake up feeing like I stopped breathing. The vibrations are about the same. My tinnitus is also about the same although I've also noticed that in addition to the slight "whooshing" sound, I sometimes hear a light clicking sound.  Some Googling reveals that this could be some sort of myoclonus of the middle ear or eustachian tube dysfunction. The myoclonus thing correlates with my feeling the my sleep disturbance is some sort of myoclonus of the diaphragm or throat or soft palate. This is why I think the vibrations we're all experience are not due to the same root cause. I found some references to something called "palatal myoclonus." One mother of a child suffering from that started a blog about it.  Her child has had multiple issues including palatal myoclonus and after years of various treatments has made the connection to Lyme.

I've made an appointment at another sleep service in the neurology department of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.  One of the top hospital's in the area. Given Toby's experiences at Mayo I'm not expecting much, but I thought I'd at least try out my myoclonus theory on them.  Unfortunately, even if I'm right the only treatment for this sort of thing is benzodiazepines or other anti-convulsant drugs, none of which I really want to take.

And of course, this could still be Lyme Disease which a couple of alternative practitioners think I have.  My joint and muscle pain kicked up for a couple of weeks and then subsided again which might reinforce the Lyme diagnosis. I'm not going to mention that at my appointment at The Brigham though...

Anyway, I'm still hanging in there (what choice do I have?) and am glad to hear that you're doing well Mike and that Toby has found some relief with clonazepam. I'm also going to look into the electrolyte thing as it's something I haven't tried yet.  You're right that   the electrolyte mix you're using may have gone off the market.  There appear to be a number of similar products and I plan to see whether Whole Foods or my local health food store sells something similar.

-b

[bl218]

Oh yeah.  And I'm fairly certain that I still have at least mild sleep apnea which is not being addressed by CPAP. Plus I tend to wake up with lots of air in my stomach after using CPAP so if nothing else, I can discuss alternate sleep apnea treatments with the folks at The Brigham

[mikezzxxyy]

Not much new here.  The electrolyte mix (Electro-Mix by Alacer) that I've been using seems to help but I really don't understand why - it doesn't have the most absorbable forms of things but it does seem to be effective.  I've noticed this several times over the last few years and in looking back to that six month or so period when I had no tremors - I was doing a lot of biking and was using this daily.  In part it's why I've been so focused on electrolytes.  That being said, I've tried supplementing each of the items individually with the more absorbable forms and that hasn't been the answer so I'm a bit stumped.  Unfortunately this has become hard to find lately - I have a bad feeling that the manufacturer has discontinued it.  I'm now heading down the path of trying the specific forms used to see if I can duplicate the results.