What Is A Panic Attack?

For the record, even though I'm sure you know what a panic attack is, the medical community defines it as a sudden episode of intense fear that sweeps over you for no apparent reason.  This fear triggers severe physical symptoms. 

The three major disabilities associated with panic attacks are agoraphobia, alcohol abuse, depression, and generalized anxiety disorder.  These can develop into serious complications if you allow your panic attacks to go untreated.

You're already probably already too familiar with the symptoms of a panic attack.  I'm sure you already know then the that major symptoms -- and the one that causes the most concern for many people -- is that of the racing heart.

"Racing heart." Sounds like the latest romance novel release, doesn't it?  But it's anything but a romantic interlude when you struggle with this symptom during your panic attack.  As an individual who has experienced an attack, I'm sure you're all too familiar with this sign.

Many people want to know exactly why the heart pounds so?  While the medical community can't tell you exactly what sets the heart to working so hard, it can tell you the mechanism by which it's working.

When your body is consumed by this panicked situation, it releases a shot of adrenaline which courses throughout your entire body.  This adrenaline -- sometimes you'll see it referred to as epinephrine causes the nervous sytem to actually stimulate your heart.

This means your heart pumps faster.  It's your body's physical mechanism setting you up for the classic "fight or flight" options.  This served your caveman ancestors well when they were faced with potential physical danger -- like those woolly mammoths.

In a panic attack though, the problem lies in the fact that . . well, there is no problem.  Your heart may even be going through palpitations.  And while this feels most life-threatening, palpitations are nothing more than an awareness of the actual beating of your heart triggered by a change in the organ's rhythm or rate.

Panic Attack Symptoms

Of course, a racing heart is just one -- if not the most prominent -- of the symptoms in a panic attack.  There are also more than a dozen other signs indicating you may be experiencing an attack.  


They are:

  • A sense of impending death
  • Sweating
  • Shortness of Breath
  • Tightness in your throat
  • Hyperventilation
  • Faintness Trembling chills
  • Dizziness
  • Hot Flashes
  • Nausea
  • Headache
  • Chest pain
  • Abdominal cramping

Your unique experiences with panic attacks may include as few as two or three of these symptoms or you may have a good number of them.

But the common denominator is that an attack begins suddenly (hence, not surprisingly the term "attack").  You can, in fact, go from being symptom free to finding yourself in the peak of an attack in as short a time as 10 minutes.  The duration of this phenomenon varies from one individual to the next.  For some, the entire ordeal is over in as few as 30 minutes

 For others, however, a panic attack may last for several hours. And in some rare instances, persons have been known to suffer with an attack for an entire day.

 At the end of the attack, it's quite natural to feel fatigued and worn out.  But more than that, most people have a heightened fear of going through another at any moment.

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