What Are Anxiety Attacks?

Anxiety attacks are short periods of panic that seize a person. These anxious feelings that overcome a person are random and can happen at any time even in your sleep. Anxiety attacks are often called panic attacks by some researchers. Some attacks or episodes may last for just a few minutes but others can be a series of connected episodes that can last for as long as several hours. Persons who suffer from anxiety should be treated calmly and rationally.

Symptoms Of Anxiety

Anxiety or panic attacks can be recognized symptoms ranging from a feeling of dread to an acceleration of heart rate. These sudden feelings can occur randomly and just out of the blue for no reason at all. Some people who have suffered panic attacks describe what they feel at that very moment highly comparable to a heart attack, a feeling of losing one's control or a sudden desperate feeling that often provokes urges to run away or flee.

Anxiety attacks' symptoms are trembling, shortness of breath, sweating, chest pain, dizziness, nausea, heart palpitations, light-headedness, tingling sensations in the face and hands and many more. The chest pain and shortness of breath are often mistaken by the sufferer as a heart attack.

Other symptoms of an anxiety attack may be an overwhelming feeling of weakness or limpness, exhaustion, a boxed in or trapped feeling, hot and cold flashes, uncontrollable itching all over the body, hyperventilation and stomach pains or hyper acidity. Some may even experience bowel movement or the urge to urinate when going through an anxiety attack. Some feel incapacitated and just want to flee or hide.

Causes Of The Attacks

Having constant anxiety attacks can be the result of your genes. This proneness to panic attacks can be hereditary. Biological cause can also be the reason for anxiety attacks like obsessive-compulsive behavior, hypoglycemia, mitral valve prolapse, post traumatic stress syndrome and hyperthyroidism.

Phobias can also be the reason why some people experience a panic attack. Other causes for an anxiety attack can be a change in your life, such as personal loss or maybe even a significant dose of caffeine. Some medications can also cause anxiety in some people. Anxiety attacks can render a person unreasonable and utterly afraid. When a person experiences an anxiety attack, it is best to try and soothe and calm that person by talking in a calm voice and trying to reason out with him or her.

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