The singer Clara Luciani suffers from these uncontrollable tremors.
“I tremble all the time”. This is how Clara Luciani describes her illness in Konbini’s Small Talk show in May 2025. The singer suffered from “essential trembling” illness as she had revealed to the Parisian in 2019. “I know what accentuates my tremors, it is nervousness and the fact that we can see that I tremble,” She says she took beta-blockers for a while before going on stage “But it’s still something that slows down your heart rate”. She has since arrested and “decided to live with” his illness.
What is this disease?
“We do not know the cause of essential tremors well, explains the neurologist Michel Vandenheede. It is more than probably a disease of the central nervous system without the source zone could not be identified with precision. ” On the other hand, what doctors know is “That it is not a degenerative disease”.
What symptoms?
The only present manifestations of the essential tremor are the tremors. They appear during certain voluntary movements or during the active maintenance of a posture for example when one stays a long time in the same position or during the realization of certain tasks (take a drink, make up, tinker …). They hinder the movements of daily life because patients cannot control them.
There is no specific test to diagnose the essential tremor. The practitioner can evoke this diagnosis by asking his patient to make certain gestures such as writing, using drinking, or drawing in order to visualize action tremors. Other situations can highlight postural tremors. The diagnosis of the essential tremor is particularly difficult due to a lack of information from patients and professionals on this unknown disease. Patients affected by this pathology sometimes take years before a name is on their symptoms. It is always essential to eliminate other pathologies that could cause tremors such as Parkinson’s disease, anxiety, alcoholism, thyroid diseases, excess caffeine, Wilson’s disease, certain dystonia and the undesirable effects of certain drugs such as neuroleptics, antidepressants, lithium.
What are the treatments?
Doctor Vandenheede specifies that “The tremor is treated only if it is disabling”. There is no treatment capable of completely eliminating an essential tremor. Many methods for acting on stress can help people with essential tremor: yoga, relaxation, sophrology, or meditation sessions can provide considerable help.
Drugs
The medications advised to reduce the intensity of the essential tremor are beta-blockers such as propanolol, drugs regularizing heartbeat and reducing nervousness, anti-epileptics (topiramate, gabapentine, pregabalin) which decrease the sensitivity of the brain to stimulation or anxiolytics. Injections of botulinum toxin are sometimes carried out in certain muscles in order to block the contraction of the muscle fibers responsible for the tremor, “Especially for the tremors entering the cephalic segment” specifies the doctor.
SCP: deep brain stimulation
Deep cerebral stimulation is a surgical technique reserved for patients with a very severe form of essential tremor, not controlled by drugs and causing significant handicap with loss of autonomy. This technique reduces the intensity of tremors from 70 to 80%. It consists in implanting in precise areas of the brain two electrodes, connected by wires passed under the skin, to two electric stimulators located at the level of the collarbones which send electrical pulses in certain areas of the brain.
What are the consequences?
People with a severe and disabling form of the disease also often present a depression, fall back on themselves and sometimes even develop a social phobia, no longer leave them because they no longer support the eyes of others. Doctor Vandenheede draws attention to the need to talk about the disease: “People with affected should not hesitate to talk to their family doctor and if necessary for a specialist who can help them in the vast majority of cases.”
What is its evolution?
The essential tremors evolve fluctuating with periods of aggravation and others of lulls. However, some patients have a much more invalidating tremor than others and not optimally responding to the drug treatments currently available. Surgical treatments are then offered to these highly invalidated patients.
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