1. Long-Term, Predisposing Causes
2. Biological Causes
3. Phobias
4. Short-Term Triggering Causes
5. Maintaining Causes
6. Lack of Assertiveness
7. Medications
8. Hyperventilation Syndrome
9. Situation Specific Panic Attacks
10. Pharmacological Triggers

Long-Term, Predisposing Causes

Long term causes are known as heredity; panic disorder, the repeated and persistent panic attacks states, has been found to run in generations of the families, which conveys that inheritance genes play a crucial role in choosing the next victim in the families. However there are also results of people with no family history developing panic disorder as well. Environmental factors can bring cumulative stress over time to an individual growing up, leading the individual to develop the disorder, which can become long-term and persistent.

Biological Causes

Biological causes are either due to Vitamin B deficiency. Vitamin B deficiency is the result of poor diet or the depletion is due to a parasitic infection from a tapeworm, which in turn trigger anxiety attacks. How can a person acquire efficient amount of Vitamin B? The natural sources of Vitamin B are potatoes, chili peppers, bananas, liver, liver oil, tuna, turkey, molasses, and yeast. Although beer can be considered to be a type of yeast, filtered beers and alcohol can interfere with the activation of the vitamins in the body.

Phobias

Phobia, an absurd, extreme, continual fear of certain situations, things, activities, or people can also directly trigger panic attacks. A list of phobias, their terms and meaning can be found at PhobiaList.com.

Short-Term Triggering Causes

Unlike long-term causes, short-term causes are not the result of heredities, but rather the result of emotional, environmental factors of due to drug abuses. Major personal loss, including an emotional affection to a romantic partner, spouse or significant other, life changes, significant life changes, stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine, or the drug abuses of marijuana can trigger panic attacks and are all short-term causes.

Maintaining Causes

If a person worries a lot about a situation, an event or the environments, increase in anxiety disorder can result. Avoidance of panic infuriating events and environments, nervous negative self-talks such as too much thinking on what if this happens or what if that happens, stubborn beliefs such as falsely believing the symptoms are of a severe disease, and lack of assertiveness can indirectly build anxieties and cause panic attacks.

Lack of Assertiveness

People with passive communication styles of being polite and respectful all the time can be characterized as being unassertive. This unassertive way of communication can lead to panic attacks, and be consistently present in those who are already experiencing panic attacks, and later grow to panic disorder. For instance, no person can be unemotional towards outside harsh impressions and comments; those who always act to be polite and respectful inside may have their feeling hurt deep down inside and compilation of feelings to oneself can build up one’s anxieties toward a situation, later leading to panic attacks.

Medications

Panic attacks can also result form the side effects of medications. Almost all the antidepressants can increase anxieties during the initial usage period, and it is common for inexperienced patients to have panic attacks while accustoming to or off the medication. Panic attacks resulting from medications may be a temporary side effect only effecting during the initial usage of the medication or it could continue whenever there is a necessity for the patient to change medication due to resistance evolvement to the current one.

Hyperventilation Syndrome

Hyperventilation is when the breathing become faster and/or deeper than usual, reducing the carbon dioxide concentration of the blood below usual. Hyperventilation can cause symptoms such as numbness, tingling, dizziness, headache, slurred speech, chest pain, and lightheadedness which can trigger panic attacks. Increase in breathing rate, can cause over breathing, where excess carbon dioxide in relation to the amount of oxygen in the blood flow is exhaled. Hyperventilation syndrome can cause respiratory alkalosis (a condition reducing hydrogen ion concentration of arterial blood plasma) and hypocapnia (a state of reduced carbon dioxide in the blood).

Situation Specific Panic Attacks

Classical conditioning, association of certain situations with panic attacks, due to experience with one in the past, can create a behaviorally or cognitive predisposition to having panic attacks at the same certain situation as before. For instance, forgetting of the words for the speech, and getting laughed at can trigger panic attacks if the person were to make a speech the next time.

Pharmacological Triggers

Similar to the side effects of medication, pharmacological triggers can also contribute to panic attacks. Certain chemical substances, such as stimulants and certain depressants, can either contribute pharmacologically to a collection of frustrations, and as the result triggering the panic attacks or even a panic disorder. Pharmacological triggers also include caffeine, alcohol, amphetamine and many other biologically effecting substances.

By: Kaung | ChitChat247.com | KMKBlog.com

The symptoms of panic attacks involve physical, mental, environmental, and perceptual symptoms.

Physical
• A sensation of adrenaline going through your entire body
• Burning sensations
• Chest pain
• Choking or smothering sensations
• Dizziness or vertigo
• Exhaustion
• Feeling of claustrophobia
• Feeling of physical weakness or limpness of the body
• Grinding teeth or tensing other muscles repeatedly or for prolonged periods of time
• Headache
• Hot/cold flashes
• Hyperventilation
• Lightheadedness
• Nausea / stomach pains
• Racing or pounding heartbeat or palpitations
• Shortness of breath (dyspnea)
• Sweating
• Tingling or numbness in the hands, face, feet or mouth (paresthesia)
• Trembling or shaking
• Uncontrollable crying
• Uncontrollable itching

Mental
• Intense and/or frightening realizations of reality
• Extreme worried feeling
• Feeling like you are going to die any second
• Feeling of “going crazy”
• Feeling of anti-social behavior from other people
• Feeling of being threatened by something (often when nothing “threatening” is present)
• Feeling of excitement
• Feeling of extreme nervousness
• Feeling of impending doom
• Feeling of nagging from other people
• Feeling out of control
• Loss of cognitive ability in general
• Loss of the ability to react logically to stimuli
• Loud internal dialogue
• Racing thoughts (often based on fear; a repeated or illogical worry)
• Vision is somewhat impaired (eyes may feel like they are shaking.)

Emotional
• Terror, or a sense that something unimaginably horrible is about to occur and one is powerless to prevent it
• Becoming upset (either angry or sad)
• Extreme anxiety or nervousness
• Fear of death
• Fear of going crazy
• Fear of living
• Fear of losing control
• Fear that the panic is a symptom of a serious illness
• Fear that the panic will not subside
• Flashbacks to earlier panic trigger[citation needed]
• Intense “scared” feeling
• Uncontrollable crying

Perceptual
• Tunnel vision
• Dissociation, or the perception that one is not connected to the body or is disconnected from space and time (depersonalization)
• Dream-like sensation or perceptual distortion (de-realization)
• Feeling of loss of free will, as if acting entirely automatically without control
• Heightened senses
• The apparent slowing down or speeding up of time

Top 10 causes that trigger panic attacks can be found here.

By: Kaung | ChitChat247.com | KMKBlog.com

Panic attacks are the sudden, unexpected periods of intense anxiety, resulting from the physiological arousal, discomfort and fear which are linked to arrays of cognitive and somatic symptoms. Even though panic attacks may occur suddenly without having apparent triggers and seem to appear random, they all occur due to the evolutionary response known as fight or flight, as first described by Walter Cannon in 1915. The fight or flight response increases secretion of excessive hormones such as epinephrine or adrenaline into the body, which help aiding in being defensive from harm. It may appear that since panic attacks can’t be predicted, its occurrence can’t be that bad, but in reality, experiencing one is the most distressing, disturbing, painful and terrifying experience.

Panic attacks can be as short as a minute to a five minute or as long as the common ten minutes. These are the usual average time lengths, and panic attacks also can be in a cyclic periodical manner, repeating at certain intervals and lasting for extended period up to hours. Panic attacks have different effects on the victims; experienced victims may be able to endure the attack with little to none apparent internal symptoms or external symptoms, but the first time victims may even require calls for emergency services to become comforted. First time victims can also endure added burden of fear while experiencing panic attack because they fear this is the initial symptom of having a heart attack or a nervous breakdown.

What is it feel like to those having panic disorders? Many victims report that the panic attack states are the most terrifying and dreadful experiences of their lives, and that they feel fear, a sense of dying and fainting, feel as though they are going through nervous breakdown and going psycho or experiencing heart attack, have flashing vision, and have the feeling of losing controls of themselves. When these feelings occur during the attack, the victims feel trapped, and their only choice of response is to fight rather than flight.

Why panic attacks occur and what are their symptoms? Panic attacks are the response of the sympathetic nervous system also known as SNS. SNS is a subdivision of the autonomic nervous system, and is always active at a basal level and it increases the activity during the times of depression or stress. Once SNS becomes more active, fight or flight response is also triggered. The most common symptoms of panic attacks include:

• Trembling
• Heart Palpitations
• Chest pain
• Dyspnea
• Hot or cold flashes
• Burning sensations
• Nausea
• Extreme sweating
• Hyperventilation
• Parasthesias
• Choking/Smothering sensations
• Feeling that everything in the surroundings is not real

All the above symptoms can result in increased anxiety, which leads to positive panic attack, and due to the panic attacks, these symptoms occur; it is like a loop between the two.

How panic attacks are different from other forms of anxiety? Panic attacks are more intense and have cyclic or episodic natures. They are most of the times in concurrence with anxiety disorders and other psychological conditions. The victims of panic attacks can’t be categorized as having a mental disorder, however there is a possibility.

Symptoms of Panic Attacks can be found here

By: Kaung | ChitChat247.com | KMKBlog.com