When I have mini or normal panic attacks my heart rate increases, I get lightheaded with hot flushes and tingling sensation in hands. Why?
In: 48
A panic attack is when fight or flight is activated, but there’s no apparent danger. This can be overwhelming because your body is amped up to fight or flee something like a … bear attack … or a car crash
But it ends up being useless and you’re consumed with and overwhelming feeling of dread.
I used to suffer from them and someone told me to “imagine a huge dog on a leash that’s trying to bite you, and it’s right in front of your face, gnarling and gnashing … but even though it looks scary … it can’t hurt you, because it’s at the end of its leash”
I used that mental trick for years until they subsided. I still get them now and again but people don’t even notice it’s happening anymore
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response
You’ve probably heard of “fight or flight response” at some point. Most animals have one. What it really refers to isn’t just behavior, it’s physiology.
Your body literally has systems dedicated to fight or flight response. In your brain, there are brain regions that activate in response to threat and get your body ready to survive. It’s supposed to be functional: if you need to fight or run, you need adrenaline, focused attention, threat awareness, more blood to get to your muscles, and to know you’re in danger.
Panic attack is when that response is triggered (where the idea of a trigger comes from) even though there isn’t imminent danger from a third party perspective. Sometimes not even from your own perspective.
From the POV of your body, though, it’s just trying to protect you. It has associated something with severe threat and it’s responding appropriately.
You get a huge epinephrine and adrenaline dump into your system to activate the fight or flight response. If you can try breathing and focusing, sometimes you can overcome it. For me, mostly not. Getting on in the morning is because you are coming out of a low hormone phase and the two items mentioned above are activated to get you awake/alert cycle started.
Look for and listen to “Huberman Lab” podcast. That guy has a wealth of science based information in many areas of how our bodies work.
Your hands go numb / muscles cramp up / face goes numb because of transient low blood calcium. When you breathe fast, you get rid of excess carbon dioxide making your blood less acidic. The albumin in your blood trades 2 protons (hydrogen ions) for 1 calcium divalent cation, making your blood calcium level transiently low in order to maintain blood pH homeostasis.
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