Jim Gibbons, with his wife, Dawn, holding the Bible, is sworn in as Nevada's 29th governor on New Year's Day by Chief Justice Bill Maupin in the chambers of the Nevada Supreme Court in Carson City. Photo by The Associated Press

CARSON CITY -- Gov. Jim Gibbons said Thursday that his doctor recently assured him that a neurological condition that causes his hands to shake would not affect his performance as governor.

"He said, 'Don't worry about it. It is not significant. It isn't going to affect your life,'" Gibbons said in a 30-minute impromptu interview after a meeting of the state Board of Examiners. "There are pills I could take, but I don't like taking medication."

Gibbons also said he first began noticing about three years ago that his hands would sometimes shake slightly. His cousin told him it was a hereditary disorder called familial tremors.

The newly elected governor's recent neurological symptoms -- he had difficulty while raising his hand to take the oath of office and when signing a proclamation -- have raised so many questions that the governor asked Reno cardiologist Kosta Arger to release a Jan. 11 letter that attested to his "excellent health." The letter makes no mention of the neurological condition.

The governor also said Thursday that he never knew he had the condition while serving as a military and a civilian pilot from the '60s through most of the '90s.

It had been unclear from previous remarks whether the governor had the condition while he was flying planes.

On Jan. 4, when asked by a reporter if the military and civilian employers he flew for were aware of his condition, he replied, "Oh, yes. They knew. Physicals are a requirement." Gibbons' staff then refused to relay follow-up questions on the topic to the governor.

On Thursday, Brent Boynton, the governor's communication director, said that Gibbons had misspoken earlier this month and apparently was reacting to something said by a reporter earlier in the interview. "He didn't know he had the condition when he was flying," Boynton said.

In the past two weeks, Boynton twice said that the governor told him he was aware of having the condition "since he was a boy."

However, Thursday, Boynton said Gibbons was just theorizing that he must have had the condition as a boy because of what his cousin told him about the disorder.

Often misidentified as Parkinson's disease, a more serious neurological condition, familial tremors is a term used to further explain a neurological condition, essential tremor, that tends to run in families. Stress and caffeine often worsen the condition, which can result in the trembling of hands, head, voice, legs or trunk.

The condition, which can grow to be so debilitating with advancing age that an individual with the condition cannot feed himself, often disqualifies people from flying, although waivers can be granted through military, government and private physicians.

A representative of the Air Force Medical Operations Agency in the office of the Air Force Surgeon General in Washington, D.C., said that if an individual who has the condition in its mild form does not disclose the disorder, it is easy to miss during physical examinations.

"You just don't know how someone with the condition is going to react under stress," the representative said. "The condition gets worse under stress. That's why we want an individual to reveal it. The condition can bring on a dangerous lack of coordination."

Although it is not unheard of for potential candidates for flight school to try to keep their medical history from authorities, the representative said a flight school applicant must sign a document denying knowledge of medical conditions. Falsification of information on government forms is punishable by fine and/or imprisonment.

Boynton pointed out that the governor "passed every physical fitness test given by the military and commercial airline industry."

On Thursday, the governor said he underwent his recent physical examination to determine his fitness to serve as governor and put to rest concerns about familial tremors. However, Gibbons acknowledged that the doctor did not specifically test for the condition. The governor did not give the doctor permission to talk to a reporter about his health.

Medical records are not public records.

Gibbons added he had a "tremendous" personal concern about a more serious neurological condition, Parkinson's disease, in which people may grow stiff and shake uncontrollably, but a blood test showed he does not have that disease.

Before starting a 10-year career in Congress in 1996, Gibbons worked as a commercial airline and military flier.

Gibbons was on active duty with the Air Force from 1967 to 1971. He served in the Nevada Air National Guard from 1975 until 1996. He served in the Air Force reserves until 1998. From 1979 until 1996, Gibbons flew for commercial airlines.

Gibbons said he did not know he had familial tremors at that time, and for that reason he never was tested by physicians.

"I didn't have it back then," Gibbons said. "I didn't notice it. I never knew it when I was flying."

The governor said his mother, a Sparks politician, died about 20 years ago at age 76. As a child, he said he sometimes noticed her hands would shake slightly when she was reading the newspaper, but he didn't consider it an illness or talk with her about it.

"I never paid attention," he said. "I thought it was something you got when you were older."

Others might have never known he had the illness, Gibbons said, until he mistakenly took a caffeine-loaded energy drink on New Year' Eve before his swearing in, a drink that he said caused the shakes.

Gibbons said his wife gave him what he thought was a diet drink. Instead it was an energy drink containing "1,000 times the caffeine of a normal drink."

Gibbons was sworn into office at midnight that night at his Reno home and then again more formally during a 10 a.m. swearing-in ceremony at the Supreme Court building in Carson City.

"I had been trying to avoid caffeine," he said "I used to drink coffee all the time, but I had been off caffeine."

Gibbons said lack of sleep and caffeine have trended to make the shaking more severe."

He described the shaking as similar to what people feel who lift weights while working out in a gym. "When you get to the last rep (repetition) and you are pushing the barbell up, your muscles shake. You need to relax the muscles."

He joked that he could not be a watchmaker with the illness, but it will not affect him serving as governor.

The governor was a combat pilot while serving in the Air Force, including a tour in Vietnam. As a longtime member of the Nevada Air National Guard, Gibbons temporarily left his job as an assemblyman in 1991 to go on active duty and fly reconnaisance jets during Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in that war.

Gibbons said stress does not exacerbate the hand tremors.

"Stress doesn't bother me as much as getting tired," Gibbons said. "I don't think it is any big deal. It doesn't affect my health. All it did is bother the people who watched me get sworn in."