That said, while anxiety itself won't kill you, it has been linked to heart disease, as well as other symptoms that can pose serious threats to your health. Although panic attacks may look like a heart attack or other serious condition, they will not cause death. However, panic attacks are serious and need to be treated. During a panic attack, a person experiences overwhelming anxiety.
They may feel that their heart is racing, that they cannot breathe, or that they are going to die. However, panic attacks cannot kill a person directly. The researchers induced the physiological effects of a panic attack by asking participants to inhale a gas containing 35% carbon dioxide and 65% oxygen. Each participant then received a cardiac scan.
Those who had PD were more likely to have a panic attack than those who didn't. Research has shown that cognitive-behavioral therapy for PD can be very effective. This treatment emphasizes “exposure therapy,” in which health professionals train people to reduce avoidant behaviors and confront them directly Research did not find that panic attacks cause heart attacks and heart disease. It also failed to demonstrate that panic attacks protect a person from death related to the cardiovascular system; the study only established a correlation between these factors.
I've always had the mentality that the phrase panic attack is overused in modern language. Feeling overwhelmed by one's own popularity in a social participation does not cause a panic attack. Real panic attacks leave you totally powerless. They fill you with an inability to talk about yourself from the ledge on which you have been placed regardless of your will.
Many of us have experienced a spasm that causes our muscles to stiffen. The body becomes tense and you may even cry in pain; but in general, everyone around you is sympathetic. They see you and they know what you're going through. Not everyone understands them or has experienced them, and the reaction is usually subjective.
What triggers it cannot trigger another person. When you feel that a panic attack is coming, there are a number of things you can do to help mitigate it and regain a sense of peace in the moment. While a panic attack can't kill you, chronic and severe anxiety affects the heart, increasing a person's chances of developing coronary heart disease and other heart problems. You can learn coping skills, of course, but you can also get to the root of the problem and work to eliminate or accept the reason for your discomfort.
In the sessions, people will learn skills to interrupt the useless thoughts that fuel and worsen their anxiety, and they will learn new and more effective ways to cope with it.
