Believe it or not, over 20 million individuals in America alone suffer from panic attacks, but many more are living with this problem and aren’t even aware of it. In fact, panic attacks are one of the most commonly mis-diagnosed health problems within healthcare.

what are the symptoms of an anxiety attack? This article will discuss the most common anxiety & panic attack symptoms, how to tell the difference between this problem and other health problems that mimic it, as well as the most effective therapies for panic attacks.

Before we discuss what an anxiety attack feels like, though, we first need to briefly discuss what happens with this problem so the symptoms and treatments make sense.

Within healthcare, an anxiety attack is actually classified as a mental problem. But this is actually not completely the case, because this problem is actually more of a problem with the nervous system than it is psychological.

Stress is the most common trigger, but panic attacks actually occur due to how the individual’s nervous system responds to that stress.

Basically, an individual who deals with panic attacks experiences a much more intense reaction to what would make most of us nervous. In order to understand this, we need to first have an understanding of the parts of the nervous system that are involved when we experience anxiety.

They are called the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). Instead of making this boring like a text book, let me tell you a story to explain how this works.

Let’s say that a bear walks into the room as you’re reading this article. Your brain will perceive the bear as stress, because it threatens your life (and I don’t know about you, but I’m a little on the chubby side, so I’d make a pretty good meal for that bear).

Your brain is hard-wired to survive, so at this moment, it has to make a decision – do you run from the bear or fight it? Either way, the body needs to be prepared for this extra activity, so your brain will turn on the SNS.

This part of your nervous system prepares your body to either fight or flee – so your blood pressure increases (you need lots of oxygen to the muscles so they can help you run fast or fight), your heart beats faster, you breathe more deeply, and many other things.

Once the bear is gone, the brain turns on the other part of the nervous system that I mentioned (the Parasympathetic Nervous System), which does the opposite – it calms you down.

When an individual suffers with panic attacks, this reaction is intensified – so, their may only be 1 bear in the room, but your brain thinks there’s actually 5 bears. This is where the problem occurs.

So, with that said, what are the symptoms of an anxiety attack? Well, the anxiety & panic attack symptoms are different for each individual, and they can be experienced to different degrees.

Some individuals will have very minor panic attacks, so may not even realize what is happening. Others have full-blown, very intense attacks that make them believe they may be dying.

Click here (what are the symptoms of an anxiety attack) to continue reading this article, where you’ll learn the most common anxiety & panic attack symptoms, as well as the most successful treatments available for relief from this health problem.