The Chemistry of Panic Attacks and Anxiety

As you know I am reading Mind Over Medicine.
Read part one of this story in my post Happiness is the Key to Getting Well.

In this post I discuss the biology of panic attacks.

Lissa Rankin's research reveals more than just the fight or flight response happening in our bodies. She reveals the why and then the how to make it stop by training ourselves to be happy and like biofeedback therapy, to think differently so the attacks don't even come or come less.

The feelings that overwhelm us are real.  They are not imagined or always triggered by an event. Some are and more work will be needed to help those subside.  However, we are going to focus on the panic attack itself and then the why and then the how to receive deliverance.

What happens during a panic/anxiety attack is physiological and is explained by science as happening in true time.  The body is affected and it is causing damage to our organs and our health.

Yes it somes from the mind but more specifically from the brain and is caused by chemical reacting when they shouldn't but they are really reacting.  The brain is sending out hormones and other chemicals in the body reeking havoc on a relatively healthy person.

Our immune system automatically sends out little soldiers to fight any foreign body or disease that enters our bodies.  It recognizes any thing that isn't supposed to be there as an intruder and attacks and ultimately heals us.
Our body is hardwired to heal itself.  But it needs the time to do that and it needs for the body to be relaxed to ensure the ultimate healing.  That is why when the body is greatly damaged in a car accident or any other kind of terrible accident we are laid up in the hospital and made to stay still. Doctors know the body heals itself after they put the bones back together or sew up the cut.  It is the body that works to put us back together again.  The doctors just gave it the chance to do that.

Emotionally the doctors can't just sew us up or cut the thing out that is causing our attacks.  But some doctors are understanding there are things that they can say and do that can set us up so that our body can heal itself.  We especially need to heal the damage that months or years of panic and anxiety have wrought on our physical body.  Our bones, our organs, our brain, our heart, our lungs.

If our body is in a state of fight or flight for too long the body can't keep up with it's normal healing process and we see more problems with sickness and disease.  We are known for being in the doctors office more with sinus infections, sore backs and muscles, osteoporosis, aches and pains that come out of nowhere.  Our immune systems are compromised and we must face that and do what we must to boost it.  You can look at it one way.  Doing this, what it takes to make us happy, will be time consuming and take focus...the things that usually work to distract us from our own heads and thoughts.

Most of us have seen this before or heard it mentioned by people with anxiety.  But to give it some medical credence Lissa writes that a "Harvard professor Dr Walter Cannon states that the body is equipped with what Cannon named the stress response, also known as the fight or flight response, a survival mechanism that gets flipped on when your brain perceives a threat.  When this hormonal cascade is triggered by a thought or emotion in the mind, such as fear, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis activates, thereby stimulating the sympathetic nervous system to race into overdrive, pumpingup the body's cortisol and adrenaline levels.  Over time, filling the body with these stress hormones can manifest as physical symptoms, predisposing the body to disease over time."*

The good news is, ""just as the stress response exists as a survival mechanism designed to help us stay alive in emergency situations, the body also has a counterbalancing relaxation response.  When the relaxation response is elicited, stress hormones drop, health inducing relaxation hormones that counter the stress hormones are released, the parasympathetic nervous system takes over, and the body returns to homeostastis.  Only in this rested, relaxed state can the body repair itself.*

This is partially why health professionals tell us to breathe deeply do meditation, do something that makes us happy.  It is to get our bodies back to relaxed state so it can stop the hormones from raging and causing destruction.  For some of us there have been lengths of time when our body did not get a rest from attack for too long.  We are exhausted and finally succumb to rest because our bodies get so worn out from fighting and tensing.  But then it just happens over and over.

We become depressed and a viscous cycle takes over our lives.

We are in perpetual stress mode have small quantities of relaxation.  This is so bad for us.  Getting older has revealed this to me.  I have more sickness when I've never been sick.  I am always fighting some kind of infection or body ache or pain.  I knew this was not normal just yet so I continued searching and now I know why I am sick more often and finally what I can do about it.

Lissa goes on to tell us how to help ourselves to become happier more relaxed people thus enabling our bodies to heal.  As we do this so our bodies can heal we find we are having less and less anxiety and panic, simply as a byproduct of focusing on changing our outlook on life, making changes in our lives that will make us happier.  It is not enough to do yoga or exercise, or eat right, or sustain from unhealthy habits.  We have to dig deep to find out what is not right in our lives.  Are we in a job we hate, a relationship that is toxic to us, a situation where someone is belittling us, not supporting us.  Are we just going through the motions of surviving knowing we are unhappy, unloved.  Or are we angry, holding onto grudges and unforgiveness.  We all have heard some of this as well.  But we have to take a step of faith and make that change and more often than not we find we are feeling better and with time we stop having attacks.

I moved to Colorado and was in a terribly abusive relationship but not working, being a stay at home mom, doing what I liked most, taking care of kids, helping someone who really needed to be protected.  I didn't have to worry about who was paying the bills.  I was strong enough to manage the abusive man (verbally) but the fear of not knowing where my next paycheck was coming from was not there anymore.

My panic went away for a year and a half.  I was shocked but understood.  But then my marriage got to a point where I had to leave, move back to my home, find work, start over, the kids were grown and on their own,  I didn't feel a purpose, I wasn't being creative, I was in a job I didn't like but needed.  My panic reared its ugly head and came full force as never before.  It was horrifying to me that it came back.  We all feel we have no choice but we do and we have to figure out how to make it and be happy.

This is the work I was talking about.  This is not going to be easy.  It's a change and change scares us.  But it is necessary if we want to be free.  Join me on this journey.  The first step is figuring out what change we have to make to begin to find happiness.   The second part is implementing it.  I'll let you know what I did and how I did it.  I want to have you hear a success story.

But in the meantime you can read Lissa's book and see some of those success stories to encourage you to believe, have faith and know there is hope!

See you soon.

Anice

*Direct quotes from Mind Over Medicine by Lissa Rankinn

Happiness is the Key to Getting Well!

Many of us wander aimlessly yet are fiercely determined looking for reasons why we have anxiety and panic.
Aimlessly because we look in all the wrong places but get oh so close.
Fiercely determined by never giving up the search for answers to the why and for solutions we desperately need so we can feel normal again.  Some of us go years with small intervals of time feeling normal. Some of us very rarely feel anxiety and some of us never feel normal. Fight or flight is our normal.  And it is exhausting.

But we continue to live with it because we have no choice.
We want to be free and happy.  We want to know there is an end in sight.
We want our friends and families to stop telling us it's all in our head and that we can stop it like we really want to be this way and are doing it for attention.
And for them to see it as a real medical condition that is debilitating a lot of the time.

It dictates how we live our lives, how safe we make our lives, how much we can work, where we can work, if we get sick a lot, if we can sleep, if we can make it to the very important meeting for work, if we can get through the grocery store line or the line at the bank without stopping and turning to run. Some of us create a world within a 5 mile radius of where we live and we don't go to the movies and we don't sit in the middle of a room full of people because we feel we can't get out.  Most of our family and friends just shake their heads not understanding the pain we feel is very very real.

But the world is a place of love if we let it be.

I had a very interesting experience the other night that made me feel like I have been divinely led to some very powerful tools that just might be the answer to our prayers and I couldn't wait to share it with you.
My God, my angels, my intuition, my spirit and soul have all been working to lead me to someone who has been in the business of healing and did a lot of research for us.
I have worked very hard to be able to listen and to be led to the tools that can make me whole again. What seemed like out of the blue (knowing now it was destined for me to hear it) I found myself listening to a wellness guy I follow on Facebook who does radio shows on all kinds of health issues.

You know how we all think we have the disease we just read about or might have a brain tumor because we have a headache that just won't go away or is the worst ever. I am always looking for ways to be healthy without medicine.

This day he was interviewing a woman called Lissa Rankin and the more I listened the straighter I sat up.  To say the least I was very intrigued by what she was saying and was most intrigued by the science behind her findings.

I became so excited that I decided to read her book. I think I may have stumbled onto some insightful information we should consider and take seriously. It offers hope for an end to our never ending battle with panic and anxiety. And it offers scientifically based evidence of medical and physiological explanations for it.

Lissa Rankin is a medical doctor who grew weary of conventional medicine not healing people.  And panic and anxiety is one of the conditions she was discussing.

I feel like I am about to embark on the journey to freedom from a woman who found her calling to heal the sick without drugs and without a desire to get rich from her discoveries. She does write a book but her intention is pure. She is a true healer and wants to heal the sick. I feel it in my bones and hope and pray you will too. We deserve deliverance and I believe she offers it.  We will have to do our part.  Get ready to have your mind blown.

I will emphasize we have heard some of this before but not in the way that we could truly believe it and implement it.  It made sense but we couldn't quite get to the how.

There is science behind everything that is wrong and has plagued us for so long.

I am a science person and needed to hear this in this way to get it, to have the light bulb go off and really see how it is possible.  The science validates everything we feel and can also help our loved ones understand what it is and they may still say, well it's still your weakness, but who cares what they think.

We are the strongest people and will always persevere. We will understand and have each other to feel association with.  We are a tribe and will support each other and love each other through this process.  And we will be happy again if we do the work and have the faith needed to do it.  Our happiness will help to heal us physically and emotionally, ultimately minimizing if not delivering us from the bondage of anxiety and the damage it does to our bodies.

The credit belongs solely to Miss Lissa Rankin. Her willingness to research tirelessly to find out how to use her medical background and access to medical journals backing up her findings is nothing short of selfless.

I think she would want me to spread the word. She doesn't want us to be sick and I hope this helps you and me.

I will go over what I think is very important to us in particular but I want to first tell you the name of the book that revealed this to me and then tell you to go to her webpage and see everything for yourself.  She is the healer.  I am someone who believes her and thanks her for her sincere desire to heal.  The book is Mind Over Medicine.  Google her name and go to her website. A wealth of information is there for you to peruse and use what will help you individually.

I praise God for Lissa Rankin MD.

No Rhyme, No Reason

Thursday morning I finally made it to the support group for anxiety and stress that meets at 10 am and is free to attend.  I have been trying to make it there for almost 2 years now.  I went and I was really good that day. I probably seemed to the others that I didn't need to be there since all quoted an anxiety level of 6 or higher while there.  I was at a zero.

Some days I feel so good.  I live for those days, those hours, those moments when all seems normal and right in my body and brain. I can think, speak, sit, stand, wait, engage, laugh.  It's a feeling most people take for granted every day.  I revel in it.  Take it in.  Am in awe of it. Am so grateful for it.  I enjoy it while I can because at any moment everything can change in an instant.  It's the strangest thing ever.  Only people like me could understand what it feels like to live like this.

The very next day I was out for the entire day.  It hit me like a bolt of lighting, very fast, unusually fast in the am just after I got up.  It was so powerful, I had to take extra meds to calm down.  Nothing worked except the meds.  My day was engulfed with trying to work and sleep and work and sleep. Escape into a place where my panic usually lets me be....in sleep.

I've had times where it has woken me, choking me, sending me flying out of bed.  But that hasn't happened in a long time.

I just don't understand how I can be so good one day and so bad the next.  There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to any of it.

I can write to you now while I am at a level 6, struggling but still able to communicate.  I wanted to get this down because I know some of you struggle with panic that comes and goes for what seems to be no reason at all.  I've kept a calender this month of each day and how and when my panic is striking and leaving.  I am doing this because it seems to be a daily thing, out of my control and I am trying to get to the root or just catalog how it lives in me at different times and seasons of life.

I have been struggling with allergies, sinus infections, stress of finally getting my own home, learning my father is declining into alzheimers.  Most things that happen to other people I can handle.  It seems that when I am personally sick, unhealthy, either from the allergies or from emotional stress I am worse.  It's the feelings inside me that set me off.  The changes in my own body that I can't deal with in a sane way.

Why are we so sensitive to feelings?  Why do they scare us so much?  It seems so silly to the average person and to me.  I self talk and say how silly I am being but my body is "just reacting" and I don't seem to have control over it.  Like my mind can''t stop my body from feeling like it has been injected with 1000 shots of adrenaline.

But I will live today in thanks and prayer and make it through.  I will push through and live for the next "normal" time.

I wish you all a panic and anxiety free day today!  I wish you peace and calm today!

Anice

Times in Between Panic and Calm

It has been a long time since I last wrote a post here on my blog. Time can get away from those of us who have panic disorder.  During stressful times a year can pass by without us doing anything except "deal" with our stress.
We use all our tools.
We go to our therapist.
We get up every morning.
 We go to bed every night.
We do everything we can in between to just get through the day.

Then one day we look around and realize an entire year has gone by.  This is what has happened to me this past year.  Because it was a year of almost non stop panic I wanted to share how I got through it in hopes of helping someone else going through something similar!  I am feeling better after a very long and difficult journey.  Never give up hope. We live for the times when things feel normal, when we can see through the fog and past the tunnel vision, when we can think clearly and enjoy the simple things most people take for granted.

I am tempted to call what this past year has been like "hypersensitivity" to the nth degree.  It felt as though I was plugged into a an electrical socket.  Everything triggered my panic in different degrees.  I was not panic free for months at a time.  Everyone wanted to know what I thought brought back such severe levels of panic.  In my case I have a stress threshold that when passed, triggers chronic panic in me, hence true panic disorder as my specific diagnosis.

This past year my mother's sister moved in with us after falling and breaking her pelvis.  This was her 6th fall in 6 years.  She couldn't be alone anymore and had to bring her into our home. She fell again soon after she moved it which helped us discover that she had diabetes.  We got her physically healthy again.  However, her sedentary lifestyle over the years and being laid up after so many falls caused her muscles to atrophy and she could walk without a walker.  She became fearful and basically did not leave a living room chair and bed except to use the bathroom and come to the dinner table.  She became angry, bitter and depressed.  We became consumed with her needs and endured her wrath daily.  It all simply became too much for me.  She was with us for a year and a half.  The last few months I was getting worse and worse.  It felt like being exposed to her negative, sad, angry emotions was like exposing me to a toxic chemical. 

I was convinced it was because of her living with us that I was not able to keep the panic at bay.  After much begging and pleading my family helped me get her to go for a month long visit to a cousin who adores her.  Almost instantly after she left I began to feel better.  I could breathe easier.
I didn't feel as if my body was on high alert.  It felt like I had been set free from a prison.

Being healthy mentally means being stress free as much  as much as is possible in this world and these times.  It is so important to keep the boundries up that keep me feeling safe.  I continue to exercise, eat and sleep well, keep busy and let my body heal from the onslaught of emotional toxins that made me sick. 

 

 

You have to fight for yourself.  You have to be selfish.  If you are not well you can't help others.  Learning how to cope is your first priority.  Implementing the things you need to do to be able to cope is the next step.  Keeping things as stress free as possible is the next.  Living a joyful life is your ultimate goal.  It may take some time to get to it but never give up. 

There is always a light and always a way.  Reach out to people like me for help or just plain understanding so you don't feel alone.  Have faith that things will get better and don't think there is something wrong with you if you can't handle big time stress triggers.  Noone can.  We just feel it more.  There isn't anything wrong with you except you have overactive areas in the brain that cause panic attacks when stress gets to be too much. 

 

I have started taking 200 mg of GABA from the health food store.  I'll let you know how it helps.  50 mg of 5HTP is also great and comes from the health food store.  Try them.  I am also trying a calcium and magnesium powder called"Calm plus Calcium".  Mixed with water it is a very good way to calm the nerves.  All these things calm different areas of the brain and they do help and they are all natural things that our bodies need to function properly.

Good luck and may you find peace today!

With Love,
Anice