What Are Panic Attacks?

Having experienced a sudden feeling of your heart racing, sweating hands, short and rapid breathing, hot flushes, dizziness and overwhelming fear, you should consider the possibility that you are suffering from a panic attack. Panic attacks are so umpleasant, they can cause you to change routines in your life to avoid one from happening again.

Panic is a normal way of responding to an impending danger and signals your body to get ready to avoid any harm. Panic attack, on the other hand, is often called fight or flight response because it is a physical reaction to stressful stimulus or situation. However, when panic attacks occur often without a life threatening stimulus, then it is considered as panic disorder.

The following symptoms are common in a panic attack:

-Rapid heartbeat
-Difficulty in breathing resulting to chest pain
-Nausea or Dizziness
-Excessive sweating
-Shaking or trembling of hands and feet
-Hot flushes or chills
-Having the thought of dying or going crazy

What causes a panic attack?

Stress is not only caused by physical hazards. It can also be caused by any of our activities that are considered as non-threatening to us. But too much stress can be harmful to our body and can stimulate panic attack - stress that is brought about by major events in our lives, like a loss of a loved one, changes in our lives such as new job or a big move. While ordinary stress can lead to anxiety, panic attacks, when occurring regularly, may be considered as a panic disorder.

It is important to seek the aid of professionals like doctors expert in this field or a psychiatrist when experiencing symptoms of panic attacks. Because the symptoms resemble other mental problems like too much stress, they cannot be directly related to panic disorder. Physical causes cannot also be directly associated with panic attack and panic disorder.

Unfortunately, most of the patients with panic attack mistakenly regard their condition as other health problems and seek the wrong treatment from what they believe is their condition. In some cases, people change their way of life, and suffer physical and psychological effects, only to accommodate the onset of panic attacks. That is why proper diagnostic procedures must be done - so the condition can be effectively treated.

Can Panic attack be treated?

Treatment of panic attack should be initiated by a physician or a psychiatrist to properly diagnose the symptoms and differentiate it from other related mental conditions which also have the same symptoms. Phobias of encountering panic attacks in public places should be also treated. A combination of both medications and therapy is most effective in the treatment of panic attacks and other related phobias. Fortunately panic disorder responds well to proper treatment which enables one to live life a normal and healthy life.

Surgery can cure face pain

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I am a facial pain sufferer. I suffer from trigeminal neuralgia. The slightest breeze on my face triggers excruciating pain. I had been on carbamazepine, but I had to stop taking it because it altered my thoughts and dreams. Now I take...

Should bullfighting be banned?

Catalonia has voted to outlaw the traditional sport. What will this mean?

Penn receives $12M NIH grant to study pharmacogenetics of nicotine addiction treatment

A variety of smoking cessation treatments are currently available for the more than 18 million adult Americans try to quit smoking each year, but success rates vary widely. Despite the importance of quitting smoking, more personalized approaches to smoking cessation treatment are needed to help smokers pick the right method that will work best for them. A major new personalized medicine clinical ...

Dr. Ronald Ricker and Dr. Venus Nicolino: Psychotropic Drugs, Our Children and Our Pill-Crazed Society

Today, the use of psychoactive drugs by children (6-17) is all too common, relied on far too much and growing at an alarming rate. It all started in the '70s.

Dr. Paul Donohue: Surgery can stop stabbing face pain

Dear Dr. Donohue: I am a facial pain sufferer. I suffer from trigeminal neuralgia. The slightest breeze on my face triggers excruciating pain. I had been on carbamazepine, but I had to stop taking it because it altered my thoughts and dreams. Now I take Tylenol. The pain is indescribable. What specialty doctor should I see? Please send any information you may have.