GenInv – Health and Wellness

What are panic attacks?

Anxiety attacks or panic attacks are occurrences of extreme fear or apprehension that happens suddenly. The terms panic attacks and anxiety attacks are used to describe a broad range of acute anxiety symptoms.

Many people who have experienced such occurrences will remember the episodes as incidences where without any warning they spontaneously felt very anxious and fearful.

Duration

The symptoms of panic attacks commonly last for about half an hour. Howev

er, the duration of a panic attack can be as short as 15 seconds, or may form a cyclic series of episodes. When this happens, an anxiety attack may persist for several hours.

Description

Often, the sufferers of panic attacks will suffer from a fear or a sense of dying. They may feel that they are having a heart attack. Others are fearful of “going crazy”, losing control of themselves. At the same time, they may feel giddy and nauseous, and may experience a numb sensation throughout the bod

y.

The feeling that one is losing control over the attacks tends to increase many people’s anxiety symptoms. Very often, these feelings provoke in the sufferer a strong urge to get away from the place where the episode first took place.

Although they appear to be random, these attacks or episodes are in reality the result of a “fight or flight” response that is occurring out of context. This “fight or flight” response overloads the body with hormones (particularly adrenaline) that aids

it in defending against harm. A panic anxiety attack is a response of the sympathetic nervous system.

Some possible causes of anxiety attacks are:

Medications