What is a Panic Attack Disorder?

A panic attack disorder is a disorder that involves sudden surges of fear, often overwhelming surges. The difference between a simple attack and a full-on panic attack disorder is the length of time the symptoms persist and the gravity of the symptoms. Essentially, a panic attack disorder disrupts your life and causes you to completely revamp the way in which you go about your daily work, home life, and social life.

A panic disorder is a fairly common condition, however. Generally without warning the symptoms arrive and cause the sufferer to feel fearful, nervous, and frightened without reason. These episodes can last minutes, sometimes even hours, and can be very disabling to most people as they essentially can freeze a person like a “deer in the headlights”. Being paralysed by fear is a very real notion to those that suffer with panic attacks on a regular basis.

The Cause

The cause for a panic attack is not usually obvious, but it is something that is generally “normal” as a part of a regular stressful modern life. The development of a panic attack disorder is usually associated with a lack of proper coping skills more than it is a brain function or a biological illness as the idea behind panic is a poor management of stressful situations.

Mental health professionals often prescribe a variety of types of therapy. These include colour therapy and hypnosis but in general result in a discussion of the fears or anxiety triggers to comprise a proper coping plan that will ease the effects of the stressors. However, in some of the more serious cases various medications can also be prescribed to aide in the balancing of brain chemicals that the stress and the poor reactions to it may have unbalanced.

Symptoms

Panic attacks usually come with a set of symptoms that include: shaking, trembling, heart palpitations, sweating, chest pains, shortness of breath, choking or feeling like you may be choking, nausea, dizziness, cramping, tingling, numbness, chills, hot flashes, and even “out of body” experiences or feelings related to that experience. There are other symptoms as well, but many of these are dependent on the individual panic attack sufferer.

Once again, the difference between a panic attack and a panic attack disorder is the frequency and the overall gravity of the anxiety and the symptoms. Many of those with an attack disorder seek counselling and are prescribed medication as well to combat the effects of the symptoms. As anyone with a panic disorder will tell you, anxiety can be very crippling and without professional medical help can cause serious problems.

What A Stress Test Can Tell A Doctor

Many people with suspected heart conditions are asked to undergo a stress test. While this sounds like it might involve gauging reactions to emotional stress, this particular test goes well beyond.

A medical stress test, quite often dubbed a treadmill or exercise test, is designed to help a doctor discover how well a patient’s heart responds to work. In other words, physical stress. During the test, doctors are able to determine how well the circulation system is performing and they can even ascertain how much exercise is right for a particular person to handle.

What To Expect

In many cases, a stress test is performed in a doctor’s office, in an outpatient center or even at a hospital. The entire test is carefully monitored and patients are not encouraged to work themselves to the point of exhaustion. The point of the exam is to see how much a person can safely handle in regard to physical activity and to enable doctors to better determine if a heart condition might be present.

During a stress test, patients can expect to do some work while being hooked up to testing devices. This can include a blood pressure cuff, electrocardiogram machine and other important diagnostic tools.

The test begins with a person being wired into a heart monitor. They are then asked to walk on a treadmill as the pace and incline are slowly increased. People are allowed to stop at any time they need to and can expect to have their heart and blood pressure checked during the test.

What The Test Tells Doctors

A stress test can be a useful diagnostic tool for a number of different health-related conditions. It is commonly prescribed to help doctors:

• Determine if coronary artery disease is present
• Diagnose heart problems in the face of shortness of breath, lightheadedness and even chest pains
• See if procedures to improve the circulation have actually been successful
• Predict likelihood of heart conditions
• Determine a safe level of exercise for a patient

A stress test might sound a lot worse than it is, but it generally is a fairly painless procedure that can tell a doctor a whole lot about the state of a patient’s heart and circulation system. If a patient is unable to perform the test physically, medications might be used to force the heart to simulate exercise. Sometimes, a nuclear stress test is prescribed to not only enable the doctor to see how the body reacts to activity, but also see what is happening in the process.

Stress test procedures are very common in cases where heart conditions are suspected. They are also not at all uncommon for use as tools to help doctors see how much patients can safely do without stress their hearts too much in the process.