Cause of Anxiety, Panic Attacks – Why We Get Panic Attacks & Anxiety

• Tweet

• Tweet

What triggers anxiety? Generally it’s stress. It builds and builds until our nervous system says “too much” and we become anxious, sometimes to the point of panic.

Generally, we assume the psyche to be the primary driving force for anxiety. And it is in the majority of cases. But sometimes physical problems, such as hypoglycemia or mitral valve prolapse, or even chemical imbalances can cause anxiety and mimic panic-like symptoms.

These biomedical triggers can join with psychophysiology to create a panic attack, but in some instances, they can provoke panic-like symptoms independent of any gross psychological markers. Yet physical problems as a cause for panic-like symptoms are often overlooked.

If you suffer from acute anxiety, how do you know if its primary cause is psychological or physical? Emotional terror is often obvious—we know we dread snakes, thunder, blood, or getting up in front of a class to speak. Non-psychological causes of anxiety are more likely to appear willy-nilly.

You are laughing and eating pizza with a friend and out of nowhere comes terror and shakes. Or following a car accident, in which you suffered a minor concussion, you begin to get panic attacks, though you’ve never felt very fearful before.

If you suffer from panic and feel you are without psychological problems, you may want to find out if your panic is medically caused. Though infrequent, purely medical causes for panic do happen.

To find this out takes assertiveness, since few medical doctors will aggressively pursue a non-psychological cause for panic attacks, and psychologists and psychiatrists may assume only a psychological cause for anxiety.

Physical

Dr. Mark Gold, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Florida, describes James, who suffered from debilitating panic attacks. His first one hit like a bolt of lightning. James was found on a neighbor’s patio screaming, “I’m dying! I’m having a heart attack!” and rushed to the nearest hospital. But the emergency room physician found nothing physically wrong with him and referred him to a psychoanalyst.

After four years in analysis, James felt understood as a person and had gained some insight into his behavior. But the panic attacks continued. Next, he saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed him as depressed and put him on antidepressants. The panic attacks continued.

Finally, James was referred for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Before being hospitalized, he met with Dr. Gold who suggested a complete medical, neurological and endocrinological testing. His glucose-tolerance test revealed the source of James’ panic attacks: non-insulin dependent diabetes. His panic attacks were apparently triggered by wild fluctuations in his blood sugar levels.

Although a case like James is rare, Dr. Gold discovered that biological problems, from brain tumors to heart problems to vitamin deficiencies, can produce symptoms identical to a panic attack. Obsessive-compulsive disorder can result from head injuries, brain tumors, strep throat, or encephalitis.

Consider some medical problems that can cause anxiety or mimic panic:

Medical Conditions that Cause Anxiety:

• Hyperventilation: Involuntary rapid, shallow breathing, or hyperventilation, leads sometimes to excessive lowering of carbon dioxide in your bloodstream. The result is light-headedness, dizziness, feelings of unreality, shortness of breath and numbness, which is not unlike having a panic attack.

  It’s unclear whether the hyperventilation causes the panic, the panic causes the hyperventilation, or whether both occur from a common cause.

• Hypoglycemia: Are you a junk food junkie? Are you stressed out? Many people will answer yes to at least one. If so, be aware that both stress and overloading yourself with sugar can cause blood sugar levels to fall too low.

  This can result in hypoglycemia, which can mimic a variety of symptoms similar to a panic reaction, including anxiety, shakiness, dizziness, weakness and disorientation.

• Hyperthyroidism: Rapid heartbeat, sweating, hyperactivity, shortened attention span, fatigue and generalized anxiety are some of the side effects from excessive secretion of thyroid hormone, which raises your metabolic rate.

• Mitral Valve Prolapse: This is a common and minor heart condition. Blood moves through the mitral valve, the valve separating the upper and lower chambers on the left side of your heart, as it passes from the upper to the lower chamber.

  With mitral valve prolapse, there is a slight defect and the valve doesn’t close completely; some of the blood can flow back from the lower to upper chamber, creating a slight heart murmur.

  Though not serious in most cases, the resulting rhythmic disturbance can throw you, especially when accompanied, as it sometimes is, by chest pain, palpitations, fatigue, difficulty breathing and anxiety. The majority of people with MVP, however, do not experience anxiety symptoms.

• Hormonal Imbalance: If you are anxious, this is more bad news. Even when in a non-threatening situation, you have elevated levels of hormones circulating your bloodstream.

  If you are a woman, notice if you experience panic-like reactions or strong anxiety around the time that you get your period—PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome) can cause anxiety and panic-like behavior.

More serious illnesses that can mimic panic symptoms include:

• Emphysema

• Cushing’s syndrome

• Parathyroid disease

• Encephalitis

• Cardiac arrhythmia

• Pulmonary embolism

• Congestive heart failure

• Brain injury

Side Effects of Drugs:

All drugs can cause potential side effects. Here are some drugs, but by no means all, that can cause anxiety or panic like symptoms.

Prescription Drugs:

• Lidocaine: Used to treat cardiac arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), as well as for general and local anesthesia. Lidocaine can cause “doom anxiety.”

• Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors: These antidepressants can cause anxiety symptoms, nervousness, insomnia, and euphoria. If unmonitored, these side effects can mushroom into symptoms indistinguishable from panic, mania, or schizophrenia.

• Prednisone: This corticosteroid anti-inflammatory drug can cause panic attacks, depression, and mild mania.

• Indomethacin: Side effects to this non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug include anxiety, along with hostility, disorientation, hallucinations, depression, and even psychosis.

• Vinblastine: An anti-cancer drug, 80 percent of patients report anxiety and depression within two to three days of treatment.

• Nalorphine: A pre-anesthetic given prior to the main anesthetic, this drug can mimic panic disorder, creating immediate sensations of panic, suffocation, and fear of impending doom.

• Birth control pills: All oral contraceptives can cause panic attacks.

Non-Prescription “Drugs”:

• Laxatives: Some laxatives contain mercurous chloride. Overuse of these laxatives can lead to mercury poisoning which can mimic heightened anxiety and phobic behavior. There will be more on this in the section on environmental toxins.

• Diet pills: Even over-the-counter, these can create anxiety symptoms.

• Caffeine: I gave up drinking coffee over 20 years ago. One day, at a friend’s house, I drank two cups of supposedly decaffeinated coffee, which was actually strong regular coffee. Suddenly, my heart began to race, my hands began to shake and I felt jumpy all over.

My experience was not unusual. Caffeine can produce instant panic in the panic-prone and panic-like symptoms in normal people. One possible reason is that coffee depletes vitamin B1 (thiamin), one of the anti-stress vitamins, and may also affect calcium balance.

Drug Overuse:

Yeast Infections: Long term use of antibiotics, steroids, birth control pills, tranquilizers and sleeping pills can weaken the immune system and allow candida albicans, a normally present fungus in the bowel, to multiply and crowd out healthy intestinal bacteria.

This upsets the digestive system and produces numerous chemicals, including male and female hormones, that in some people can create mood swings, anxiety and depression.

Few people who suffer from candida overgrowth know it, and doctors tend to only prescribe more pills for its symptoms, which in addition to anxiety include irritable bowel syndrome, bloating, gas, allergies, arthritis and fatigue. Though rarely the sole reason for anxiety, yeast infections can be a contributing factor.

Drug Abuse:

Drug abuse and panic attacks often go hand in hand, as many anxious people use substances to induce calm.

• Alcohol: When people drink, they tend to not eat, which causes nutritional problems. If you use alcohol to calm yourself, as people do since it initially acts as a depressant, you may unknowingly further your panic attacks. As the effect of the alcohol wears off, your anxiety will return more intensely and create an immediate need for more alcohol.

• Marijuana: Arianna only had one joint of marijuana, shared with two friends at a party, but the sensations were far from relaxing and pleasant. She felt estranged from her body, as if she were behind a glass wall watching people laugh and talk. This depersonalization and sense of unreality is a possible side effect of marijuana and a symptom of panic attacks.

Anywhere from 18 to 32 percent of patients hospitalized for alcoholism may be suffering from a panic disorder, agoraphobia, or from other social phobias.

• Cocaine: Regardless whether cocaine is sniffed, injected, or smoked (as freebase or crack), it can produce anxiety-mimicking side effects, such as increased heart rate and irregular heart beat, restlessness, and high blood pressure. EEG tracings of the brain following cocaine injection show activity in the same area of the brain responsible for “flight or fight”—the exact reaction during a panic attack.

• Amphetamines: Common side effects of amphetamines, or “speed,” include rapid heartbeat, elevated blood pressure, and overstimulation—in other words, some familiar symptoms of anxiety disorders.

• Narcotics withdrawal: Withdrawal from narcotics such as heroin, methadone, and codeine can result in anxiety symptoms.