What is an Anxiety Disorder Panic Attack?

An anxiety disorder panic attack can change your life and the way you live it forever because of the way panic and anxiety simply “take over” the body. This brief article will take a closer look at the anxiety disorder panic attack and what effect it has on our lives, how we can handle it, and what it means in the long term.
The basics of an anxiety disorder panic attack

Anxiety disorder affects about 13% of the world’s population, according to most objective world health sources. Anxiety disorders include panic attacks, fear disorders, and sleep disorders. Stress disorders affect more women than men by a difference of about 2 or 3 percent. Anxiety attacks appear for a reason, generally that the handling of life’s stressful situations is not adequate to help the body adjust. They appear to be random but normally are not. They appear to be without cause but normally have a very clear cause: stress.

An anxiety disorder panic attack will continue to occur only because the sufferer has not done enough to prevent it by not handling the stress properly and allowing other factors to interfere with normal stress management. Factors like a poor diet, little to no exercise, and insufficient stress relief can all add up to bigger problems. In a general sense, anxiety attacks can be treated only through treating the individual symptoms. The essence of a stress-related attack is deeper than the symptoms, however.

Cures

There are many ways to cure the panic attacks in your life and all of them are related to eliminating or handling the stress that you have. First, getting a proper sleep on a regular basis is a key component to resting the body and helping it recover from the day’s events. Second, a proper diet gives the body the nourishment it needs to continue through the day and repair the cells, organisms and tissues that need to be repaired. Third, taking private time to yourself helps rejuvenate your spirit and quiet your heart. This is generally a philosophical point of view but it is known to help several people with their anxiety disorder panic attack and its symptoms.

Long-term

The long term stress related problems that a panic attack can generate can be quite severe. If an anxiety attack is not handled properly, the heart takes punishment first and other bodily organs follow. The brain dedicates its energy elsewhere, the lungs work harder, the heart pumps faster, and the blood thins due to lack of cellular support. Effectively a panic attack is a multi-system attacker as oppose to being just about one organ or bodily system. With such broad symptoms, the body definitely takes a lot of punishment from a panic attack. Take care to live a low stress, healthy, balanced life and panic attacks will be a thing of the past for you and your family.

Anxiety Attack Heart Problems

Anxiety attack heart problems are any problems related to the cardiovascular system of your body that are caused by anxiety or panic attacks. Due to the very nature of a panic attack, it is not surprising that anxiety attack heart problems are among the leading causes of heart attacks or other cardiovascular issues among North Americans today. This is not to say that an anxiety or panic attack does not have a heavy effect on other systems of the body as well, but it’s effect on the heart and blood flow is easily measured and quite noticeably dangerous.

A panic attack is a sudden onset of fear or other terror that causes frightening symptoms that can paralyze a person in the mood of the moment. Many people report the notion of being “frozen by fear” and an anxiety attack definitely resembles that to a large degree. Patients discuss shaking, trembling, chills, numbness in extremities, heart palpitations, and trouble breathing among other things that are caused by the great difficulty of a panic attack.

Anxiety attack heart problems are common because of the close association stress has with other heart problems. Anxiety can accompany any heart disease or cardiac condition that causes a drop in blood pressure because of this close relationship in systems and bodily functions. This, in fact, causes a sudden decrease in cardiac output, which is the amount of blood being pumped by the heart. Anxiety is also closely related to (but not the cause of) a condition called mitral valve prolapse or MVP.

Panic attacks generate a common human response to danger: the “fight or flight” response. This was said to evolve from early human types that either fled danger or took it on if they could. Fight or flight generates a lot of biological processes because of the energy the body needs to perform either task. The heart races, the blood quickens, the eyes function differently, senses are heightened, and other parts of the body begin to react in other ways such as muscles tightening, etc.

Anxiety attack heart difficulties can arise from the heart being told to work too fast by the brain, which is in charge of the “fight or flight” mechanism. At this point, the body often decides to simply shut down because it’s easier on the systems involved. For this reason, the heart once again runs the virtual gamut of both beating faster and beating slower; calming the body down and slowing blood flow one moment and then speeding the body up and creating more blood flow the next minute.

The Relationship between Alcohol and Panic Attacks

Alcohol and panic attack experiences; when it comes to chronic panic attack disorder, drinking is perhaps the worst thing a person could do. Alcohol is considered a depressant, and most panic attack sufferers tend to be more susceptible to the effect of such chemicals. Drinking during a panic attack will not help calm a person down, nor will it help relax them and prevent an attack.

Most doctors will agree that alcohol and panic attack experiences do not mix. In fact one of the things a doctor will suggest to any newly diagnosed panic sufferer will be that they cut down on their alcohol consumption. The depressing effect of alcohol can lead to more frequent occurrences of panic. It can also lead to an increased chance of causing depression, which can just cause more problems for any panic sufferer.

In some cases the excess consumption of alcohol can be one of the main causes of frequent panic attacks. The depressing affect of the alcohol can cause a person to dwell on the unwanted stressors that trigger their panics. This only increases the likelihood of stronger, more frequent attacks; something most panic attack sufferers would prefer to do without.

Will just one Drink Hurt?

So now that we know the basic relationship between alcohol and panic attack experiences, does that mean that a panic attack sufferer is not allowed to drink? The answer is surprisingly, no. A person who experiences panic, even frequent panic, is not disallowed to drink. What is considered a no-no is the excessive use and abuse of alcohol. A drink or two to relax yourself is not a bad idea, it’s when a person takes their drinking too far that the real problems begin to arise. This excessive abuse of alcohol is what will trigger these increased panic problems, so the simple solution to this problem? Don’t drink too much.

Panic attacks are not fun, and once the relationship between alcohol and panic attack experiences are truly understood by a person, it will become apparent what they must do. Everyone has different limits, and different alcoholic thresholds. The key is to understand where your limit is and to not step over it. For most people suffering from chronic panic attacks, this limit will begin to become natural. Because as any panic sufferers can tell you, a panic attack is extremely unpleasant and it isn’t worth having even if it means passing up that extra drink.