Panic and Anxiety Attacks
Panic and Anxiety Attacks can be an incredibly scary thing for anyone to experience. Not only do they occur when least expected, they tend to mimic heart attacks and other serious health conditions, which leaves the sufferer to wonder if they will even live through it.
This article will discuss what causes panic and anxiety attacks, the most common symptoms associated with them, as well as the most effective treatments available.
Within healthcare, a panic attack is actually classified as a psychological condition. But this is actually not completely true, because this condition is actually more of a problem with the nervous system than it is mental.
Stress is the most common trigger, but panic and anxiety attacks actually occur due to how the person’s nervous system responds to that stress.
Basically, an individual who suffers with panic and anxiety attacks experiences a much more intense reaction to what would make most of us nervous. In order to understand this, we need to first have an understanding of the parts of the nervous system that are involved when we experience stress.
They are called the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). Instead of making this boring like a text book, let me tell you a story to explain how this works.
Let’s say that a bear walks in the room as you’re reading this article. Your brain will perceive the bear as stress, because it threatens your life (and I don’t know about you, but I’m a little on the chubby side, so I’d make a pretty good meal for that bear).
Your brain is hard-wired to survive, so at this moment, it has to make a decision – do you run from the bear or fight it? Either way, the body needs to be prepared for this extra activity, so your brain will turn on the Sympathetic Nervous System.
This part of your nervous system prepares your body to either fight or flee – so your blood pressure raises (you need lots of oxygen to the muscles so they can make you run fast or fight), your heart beats faster, you breathe more deeply, and many other things.
Once the bear is gone, the brain turns on the other part of the nervous system that I mentioned (the Parasympathetic Nervous System), which does the opposite – it calms you down.
When a person suffers with panic attacks, this reaction is intensified – so, there may only be 1 bear in the room, but your brain thinks there’s actually 5 bears. This is where the problem exists.
So, with that said, what are the signs and symptoms of panic and anxiety attacks? Well, the symptoms of a panic attack are different for each person, and they can be experienced to different degrees.
Some individuals will have very minor panic attacks, so may not even realize what is occurring. Others have full-blown, very intense attacks that make them believe they may be dying.
Either way, the most serious signs and symptoms of panic and anxiety attacks include:
- Speeding heart rate (a feeling like your heart is beating so fast or intensely that it may jump out of your chest).
- Profuse sweating
- Chest pain (more like a tightness in the chest)
- Difficulty breathing
- Paranoia
- Nervousness
- A jittery feeling (like you have rushes of adrenaline)
- A feeling of impending doom (as though you’re going to die)
- Fears of all sorts (fears of small spaces, large groups of people, being social, etc.)
- A feeling that the room is closing in on you
- Among others
I know these symptoms sound horrible, but please realize that not everyone experiences all of these symptoms, and some may experience them to a much smaller degree.
No matter how severe your symptoms are, the good news is that panic attacks are not a death sentence. There are actually a number of very helpful treatments for panic and anxiety attacks, and many of them are natural.
Most doctors will prescribe medications for this condition, but these medications can have negative side effects. In fact, some of the most common side effects of Psychotropic drugs (the drugs used for this condition) are insomnia, restlessness, headaches, nausea, sexual problems, fatigue and memory loss.
Believe it or not, the most effective treatment I’ve found for eliminating the signs and symptoms of panic attacks is a simple exercise you can do without the help of a doctor, called the Linden Method.
This method is simple, doesn’t take a lot of time, and produces instant results in most cases. This is, by far, the fastest way to reduce the signs and symptoms of panic attacks.
There isn’t enough room in this article to teach you this method in detail, but if you would like to learn the Linden Method you can click here (panic and anxiety attacks) for all the details.
