What Are The Symptoms Of A Panic Attack?

Posted by admin

June 25, 2009

Believe it or not, over 20 million people in the United States alone suffer from panic attacks, but many more are living with this problem and aren’t even aware of it. In fact, panic attacks are one of the most commonly mis-diagnosed health conditions within healthcare.

what happens to your body during a panic attack? This article will cover the most common panic attack symptoms, how to tell the difference between this problem and other health conditions that mimic it, as well as the most effective therapies for panic attacks.

Before we discuss what a panic attack feels like, though, we first need to briefly discuss what happens with this problem so the symptoms and treatments make sense.

Within healthcare, a panic attack is actually classified as a psychological problem. But this is actually not completely the case, because this problem is actually more of an issue with the nervous system than it is psychological.

Stress is the most common trigger, but panic attacks actually occur due to how the person’s nervous system responds to that stress.

Basically, a person who suffers with panic 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 clarify how this works.

Let’s say that a bear enters 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 chunky 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 increases (you need lots of oxygen to the muscles so they can help 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, their may only be 1 bear in the room, but your brain thinks there’s actually 5 bears. This is where the problem happens.

So, with that said, what happens to your body during a panic attack? Well, the panic attack symptoms are different for each person, and they can be experienced to different degrees.

Some people will have very minor panic attacks, so may not even realize what is occurring. Others have full-blown, very severe attacks that make them believe they may be dying.

Click here (what happens to your body during a panic attack) to continue reading this article, where you’ll discover the most common panic attack symptoms, as well as the most successful treatments available for relief from this health problem.

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