How To Overcome Panic Attacks

Panic attacks have been the subject of controversy among researchers in neuroscience and medical fields for a long time. Are they purely attributable to psychological causes, and thus can be cured easily with talk therapy, or do they have underlying physiological causes in the brain? A group of scientists at the National Institutes of Mental Health may be able to provide some answers to these persistent questions. They recently examined brains of several sufferers of panic attacks and made some interesting discoveries. They discovered that these individuals were missing receptors, protein molecules which receive chemical signals in the brain, for the neurotransmitter (chemical signal) serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, sleep, and appetite.

It is believed that serotonin normally binds to certain receptors in the brain when individuals are faced with new situations to help regulate their mood. If these receptors are not present, these individuals react in an anxious way that is typical of a panic attack. Symptoms include severe tension, tightness, and pain, and sufferers often report feeling near death. Support for the physiological cause hypothesis is the fact that many anxiolytic drugs make active the receptors that are supposed to absorb serotonin. Further tests must be done to verify to what extent this is actually the cause for this condition.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 9:41 am and is filed under How to cope with panic attacks. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.