The Taming of Amygdala: How Can One Defeat Panic Attacks.

Very often, I receive various questions regarding panic attacks: what are they, how to deal with them, are they prone to any kind of treatment, and so on. That’s why I’ve decided to create not vast but informative post about this topic for you.
Amygdala (amygdaloid body) — a small organ in our brain, which is responsible for the fear emotion. In an instance, amygdala prepares the body to react to any danger. An individual receives a sensory stimulus, precisely speaking — can see, hear, or feel the danger, to which amygdala immediately responds. Therefore, this is the organ which affects the state of anxiety. The highest level of anxiety is panic or a panic attack.

Sympathetic nervous system controls our body’s reaction to anything that can trigger any kind of threat. This is exactly what makes us run during a dangerous situation, or vise versa “freeze”. Amygdala initializes the process and sends a signal to the adrenal glands that cause the release of adrenaline (epinephrine) and cortisol. Hence, a panic attack occurs as a result of the production of an irritant. For every individual, this irritant is different. Someone happens to be on a plane, someone in a movie theater, someone at a stadium, the list can go on forever, but the main point remains the same — the process begins here. A panic attack reaches its peak in just 10 minutes, and during this time, physiologically happens something that I described above. As a result of adrenaline and cortisol outburst, a person tends to experience a certain amount of symptoms, starting from dizziness, suffocation, nausea, palpitations, and high blood pressure to the sensation that there is a loss of control and even coming of death. The perception of such symptoms is essentially false. Moreover, such symptoms and sensations are like a vicious cycle. A person does not acknowledge that there is an irritant triggering him, and for no reason at all, he excruciates himself to an extreme condition. It becomes dreadful from physiological symptoms, and the system collapses. From a dreadful feeling derive the symptoms, and from that symptoms the panic continues. The good news is that no one has ever died from a panic attack in its pure form. And even if someone did die, there were other reasons that simply matched in timing (e.g. cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, etc.)

Such attacks should and need to be defeated, and as a rule, as years pass, they tend to go away for a person starts to understand what is going on. When one is already familiar with pathogenesis of a panic attack, a patient feels relieved. The easiest and simultaneously the hardest way to deal with panic attacks is to identify the stimulus. This can be figured out quite simply in a psychotherapy session, and subsequently tried not letting this stimulus into one’s life.
Latest studies have shown that combining antidepressants and sedatives tends to work quite effectively. However, the downside of sedatives is that they are addictive, so that’s why the doctors do not recommend them. On the other hand, antidepressants are not addictive. The latter are not designed to suppress the nervous system, but instead to regulate the level of serotonin in the brain.

In addition, GABA (which can be found in our shop) is highly effective in anxiety treatment as well as it helps to prevent the occurrence of panic attacks.

Author: Masha Lopatova