What is panic disorder? Panic disorder falls under the umbrella of Anxiety Disorders. Anxiety disorders, such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Post Traumatic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder are all fairly common. These disorders as a group are thought to affect up about 18% of adult in the United States and about 20% of adults worldwide. Panic Disorder is a condition that affects 2-3% of Americans, and it is twice as common in women than men. It is primarily characterized by the presence of unexpected and recurrent panic attacks. The definition of a panic attack is when “a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions, when there is no real or apparent danger”. Your body believes you are in …show more content…
Although panic attacks are the defining characteristics of panic disorder, it is not rare for individuals to experience panic attacks in the context of other psychological disorders. It is possible for panic attacks to be rare and only to occur in certain anxiety producing situations, or even to be a one-time incident. To further explain, someone who has social anxiety might experience a panic attack before public speaking at a conference or meeting. Panic attacks from panic disorder usually begins in adulthood (after age 20) but younger people can also suffer from the disorder as well, many children experience panic-like symptoms. Symptoms of panic attacks vary, the most common symptoms include palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate, sweating, trembling or shaking. Some of the more intense symptoms are feelings of choking, chest pain or discomfort, nausea or abdominal distress, feeling of dizziness, fainting, chills or heat sensation, paresthesia. Paresthesia is a feeling of numbness or tingling. Some who have panic disorder may experience what is referred to as limited-symptom panic …show more content…
New evidence suggests that sudden heart intensive panic attacks are most likely due to abnormalities in the brain. People with panic disorder, according to scientists at the National Institute of Health, have drastic reduction of 5-HT1A, a type of serotonin receptor. The findings lead scientists to believe that the serotonin reduction plays a role in panic disorder. Traditionally the biological basis of the disease has been poorly understood. Though serotonin enhancers have acted as some of the best drug treatment for the disease, which hints at the chemical involvement of serotonin to the disease. Tests have been done on mice where the gene for their serotonin receptors is eliminated, and in result, the animals have a greater risk of anxiety. In another study, scientists used brain images to peer at serotonin reports in humans. The subjects, 15 people without panic disorder and 16 with it were injected with small quantities of benign radioactive tracer that hung on to the receptors, allowing researchers to find their exact locations and determine how many there were. Members of the panic group only had 66% as many receptors in the anterior and posterior cingulate regions of the brain as the control group. There was also a noted deficiency in the raphe region that is responsible for processing emotions. One of the authors of this study, Dr. Alexander Neumeister, believed these receptor deficiencies were caused by genetics,