As documented in the book, The Case of the Frozen Addicts,

a bad batch of so-called synthetic heroin caused within days

would appear to be advanced-stage Parkinson's disease.

Thanks to a chemical contaminant known as

MPTP, young men and women were left trapped inside their bodies, with near

complete immobility in some cases able to move only their eyes. The seminal

paper describing the phenomena ended with the silver lining that maybe this will

help us find the culprit in Parkinson's.

Attention turned to a class of chemicals called beta-carbaline alkaloids due to their structural

similarity to MPTP, and indeed higher levels of these toxins were found in the brain fluid

of Parkinson's patients. In How Not to Die, I address Parkinson's, since this is one of our leading killers,

but the most common movement disorder is what's called essential tremor,

affecting up to 1 in 25 adults, older than 40, and up to 1 in 5 people in their 90s.

In addition to the potentially debilitating hand-trimmer,

there can be other neurological manifestations,

including cognitive impairment, depression, and sleeping problems.

In medical lingo, essential can mean of unknown cause,

like essential hypertension, the rise in blood pressures we age.

Just as there have been calls for decades

to rename that phenomenon once it became clear that lifestyle behaviors played a critical

role, there are those suggesting we rename essential tremor as we come to understand it better

as well. Identical twin studies suggest it may only be 60% genetic, though there have been studies linking

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