What Happens In The Body And Is It Panic Attack Symptoms?

As I have discussed in other articles there is a response that the body takes to fear and threatening situations and that is to release chemicals and hormones into the blood stream. It is a result of the release of these hormones into the body that we get the responses we do to fear or threat situations. This does not mean that you are experiencing panic attack symptoms but merely this is the way the body deals with these kinds of situations.

There are four main chemicals or hormones released into the body and these are:

Adrenaline ( epinephrine)
Noradrenaline ( norepinephrine)
Serotonin
Gamma-aminobutyric acid ( GABA)

I shall be dealing with each one in turn.

There are many other chemicals that are also released but as yet the knowledge of these and how they effect our body is very limited.

It is important that these chemicals are released in the correct amounts into the body but with anxiety problem sufferers this is not the case and too much of these chemicals are released causing an imbalance. It is this imbalance that may give rise to the thought of panic attack symptoms.

It is not clear why this happens to sufferers of anxiety problems but there are some ideas that it may be a genetic problem which is triggered by a traumatic event, or that these changes in the brain chemicals that the scientists are seeing is actually the result of anxiety and not the cause of it.

Let us begin with Adrenaline or epinephrine.

This hormone effects a lot of the organs and direct action of this hormone on nerve cells gives rise to many of the symptoms of anxiety. It effects the blood cells, the skin, the gut, the brain, the heart and the lungs.
It therefore has a great effect on each of these and can cause a lot of distress if it is not balanced properly with the other hormones released into the body.

Noradrenaline or norepinephrine

A variety of stressful events, including emotional stress, cause a marked increase in noradrenaline release in several of the brain regions, and especially in the hypothalamus, amygdala and locus coeruleus. These findings suggest that an increased noradrenaline release could be closely related to the provocation of negative emotions such as anxiety and/or fear. There have been lab studies too that indicate that activation of nerves that contain noradrenaline can cause anxiety and also that high levels of the by-products of this hormone are found in the brain system when people are anxious.

Serotonin

This chemical seems to be important in depression as it acts as the messenger between the nerve cells and for people who are feeling depressed this messenger system may not be working properly. However an increase in serotonin levels can lead to anxiety, this is only if the increase is for a short period of time because long periods of increased serotonin levels have shown to calm people down. This may be because serotonin has effects on the other chemicals in the brain by changing their concentration and as a result many of the drugs that are used in the treatment of anxiety disorders have an effect on serotonin levels in the brain.

GABA

Many scientists believe that in anxiety the GABA activity is decreased and that nerves that contain GABA in the brain do generally calm people down. It is for this reason that some of the drugs prescribed for anxiety problems are believed to work by increasing the function of the GABA containing nerves and therefore calming people down even more.

So by explaining in quite some detail the workings of the hormones in the body you can see that panic attack symptoms is perhaps the wrong phrase to use more like natural bodily reaction to fear would be better.