Panic Attack Syndrome

One fine morning at 7.30 am Mamta as usual got ready to leave for work. When she sat behind the steering wheel bracing for an hour or more of long drive, she suddenly froze and felt that she just couldn’t breathe. She had been stressed more than necessary for the last one month. There were problems at work. People were being given pink slips almost everyday in her department and her boss-from-hell had made her life miserable. Staring blankly in the space at the driver’s seat she just couldn’t fathom what she had to do next and felt as if she had lost her voice, is choking and just couldn’t breathe. Fortunately, her dad saw her and rushed her to the hospital, where she was given tranquilizers to calm down. When she woke up, her doctor said that she was fine and had nothing to worry about. The attack that happened that day repeated after a month and this time when she went to the emergency room and the doctor gave her anti-anxiety medicines with the same answer that she was okay. Mamta felt anything but okay. Gradually her confidence began to erode and she started dreading her unexplained, unannounced attacks and this was interfering with her social, personal and official life. By the time she visited Dr Arti Anand, consultant clinical psychologist with Ganga Ram Hospital, she had become a nervous wreck, had stopped going to office was taking tranquilisers to sleep at night, which still evaded her and was seeking an explanation and name to her condition.

Panic attack or anxiety disorders have become fairly common these days. Yes, the ‘R’ word or recession has a lot to do with it. Dr Anand explains, “Panic attack is a discreet period of intense fear or discomfort in the absence of real fear. It develops abruptly and reaches a peak within ten minutes.” In an episode of panic attack the body’s natural fight or flight reaction occurs at the wrong time. In the face of a threat such as an assault, an accident, or a natural disaster this type of reaction is perfectly normal

Symptoms associated with panic attack include—palpitations, pounding heart, accelerated heart rate, sweating, trembling, shaking and feeling of choking, shortness of breath, nausea, feeling dizzy, fainting and light headedness. The person having an attack often feels that she is having a heart attack. An attack can last from few seconds to minutes and in most of the cases the attack repeats itself and women get more panic attacks than men.

Many people with panic attack become fearful of being alone and of visiting public places because they fear of having a panic attack. Of course this only adds to the level of anxiety and leads to their lives being abnormally restricted.

For years panic attacks were dismissed as a psychosomatic phenomenon. However, repeated studies have shown that this disorder has a real, physical basis. The attacks also happen to run in families and experts have discovered that panic attacks are caused by a malfunction in brain chemistry wherein brain sends and receives false emergency signals. Hyperactivity in certain areas of the brain causes the release of ‘norepinephrine’ which causes the pulse, blood pressure, and breathing to become more rapid. Clinical depression has often been associated with panic attacks.

Treatment
Dr Anand says that current treatment guidelines given by American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association recommend cognitive-behavioral therapy for dealing with panic attacks. This includes relaxation techniques and cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring in cognitive therapy is the process of learning to refute cognitive distortions, or fundamental “faulty thinking,” with the goal of replacing one’s irrational, counter-factual beliefs with more accurate and beneficial ones.
Medicines like SSRIs and anti-anxiety medicines help people with panic attacks.

Alternate way

Gurgaon based homeopath Dr Vidhi Trikha says, “In Homoeopathic treatment we go to the root cause of the panic attack or anxiety disorder, which we extract through the detailed history of the patient and dates back to the point of the conception. The jotting down of the case history itself is very therapeutic for the patient as it helps him/her to come out with deep-rooted emotions, pains and fears which render a perspective to anxiety disorder.” There are two types of medicines that are used in Homoeopathy. For acute attacks Aconite, Gelsemium, Kali phos etc. are used to treat the Panic attack. These are taken during the attack in repeated doses, till the attack subsides, under the guidance of a trained Homoeopath. Deep acting remedies like Arsenic Album, Ignatia, Lycopodium, Natrum mur etc are used to treat the anxiety disorder and to prevent occurrences of panic attacks.

Nutritional experts recommend avoiding foods containing lots of refined sugar as well suggest keeping a food diary to trigger correlation between the foods you eat and attack.

Learning deep breathing techniques are also helpful in managing an acute attack. Inhale slowly through the nose to a count of four, hold your breath to the count of four and exhale through your mouth through a count of four. Keep doing it till your attack subsides. Aroma therapists recommend lavender oil to keep feelings of stress at bay.

Believe in talk therapy. When you share your woes with trusted family and friends you feel better. Take life as it comes, eat nutritious meals and exercise often.

Panic attacks are usually abrupt and intense. They can occur at any time of the day or night, lasting from several seconds to half an hour. To the panic sufferer the episodes appear much longer.

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