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  panic attacks Understanding Panic Attacks

                                                          panic attack You are in "Understanding"

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The most essential thing to learn about panic attacks are the experience of panic itself. Once it happens, a person's life changes dramatically. Panic attacks bring on the fastest and most complex changes known in the human body. It is experienced as overwhelming, uncontrollable dread, as if one is terribly ill, about to die or lose one's mind. It drastically changes the the functioning of major glands, heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, pancreas, kidneys, bladder, eyes, and the largest muscle groups. Even violent poisons or traumatic injuries have less effect. A cascade of stimulants and hormones - adrenaline, epinephrine, glycogen, cortical, norepinephrine, among others - flood all the cells of the body via the bloodstream. The impulse is to run, get out, or hide.

The immediate cause is believing one is trapped and helpless, by some overwhelming threat. While panic can happen as a consequence of crime or disaster, it doesn't matter whether the threat is real. Often, panic happens after several weeks or months of stress. It happens more often with persons who are very worried, perfectionist, socially avoidant, or who have had abuse in childhood. Heredity may play some part. What keeps panic going, and getting more intense and frequent, is worrying excessively about it and strenuously avoiding situations that appear to bring panic .  Look up Signs and Symptoms of Panic Disorder for more details.

Panic attacks masquerade as a variety of medical disorders. Panic mimics some medical conditions almost completely, causing years of misdiagnosis. These are hypoglycemia, complex partial seizures, drug effects, heart arrhythmia and hyperventilation syndrome. Panic partly mimics others: angina, asthma, irritable bowel, colitis, vertigo, mitral valve prolapse, post concussion syndrome, hypertension, postural hypotension, and hiatal hernia. Almost everyone who panics believes they have a serious physical illness, and go from doctor to doctor for several years as symptoms shift. Yet panic is easily diagnosed by professionals experienced in panic.

About 7.2% of all adults, or 1 in 15, have a panic disorder which is a primary part of their disorder, (NIH, 1993). In any given year, about 1/3 of American adults have at least one panic attack; most of these adults never develop repeated panic attacks. This startling data means that a phobia/panic disorder is the most common emotional disorder, more common than alcohol abuse or depression. Phobia/panic disorder also has the lowest rates for seeking help and finding it, about 22%. Phobia is the most common and the most hidden condition at the same time.

After a few months of panic, about 10% of people become housebound and unable to leave home alone. After a few years, about 30% of panic sufferers have a loss of job, pay or job responsibilities. Some 17% are at risk for alcoholism and about 40% risk a chronic depression as life opportunities are cut off. A majority have marital problems and much reduced travel and social life. The economic cost has been estimated at about $2600/year in misdirected treatment, and about $12,000 a year in lowered job earnings. For most, panic closes life off like a prison.

Techniques to eliminate panic attacks

 

 

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