Caffeine and tremor

Abstract

Two percent of normal controls noted that drinking coffee made their hands shaky. Eight percent of essential tremor and 6% of Parkinson's disease patients thought that coffee worsened their tremor. In formal tests, a single oral dose of caffeine (325 mg) did not increase physiologic, essential tremor, or parkinsonian tremor at 1, 2, or 3 hours after ingestion. Caffeine only infrequently induces tremor in normal people, and it does not exacerbate pathologic tremor.