Prevent Panic Attacks – Eat Healthy

Panic attacks are becoming more and more common nowadays. Studies have shown a steady increase in the number of people suffering from panic attacks. But what exactly are panic attacks, and how do we cope with it? Read on and you’ll find very helpful tips on how to manage them.

Panic or anxiety attacks are a sudden episode of unreasoning fear or panic. Some of its causes are heredity, as side effect of medication, or some life-changing event like having a baby, moving house, or losing or getting a new job. For example, a person who has been involved in a boating accident, when he or she was a child, may experience an attack whenever the need to ride a boat arises. Many attacks cause such severe physical symptoms that people go to the emergency room thinking that they are dying or having a heart attack. A panic attack feels very severe with both physical and mental symptoms. Some common physical symptoms include chest pain or discomfort, palpitations or accelerated heart rate, sweating, trembling or shaking, blurry vision, Feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, or faint. Some people feel the sense of losing control or going insane, or of impending death. Even if some symptoms may be severe, it is important to point out that panic attacks are highly treatable.

We may not know it, but the food and drinks we intake can make us more susceptible to panic attacks. The top three substances to avoid are alcohol, caffeine, and sugar. Too much alcohol intake raises hyperactivity in the nervous system, and makes a person more irritable. High consumption of caffeine is another trigger of panic attacks. Caffeine can make you jittery, interrupt proper sleep, and negatively affect blood sugar and bone density. Most people think that drinking decaffeinated coffee is better than regular coffee, but the truth is, it isn’t. The biggest problem with decaffeinated coffee is that the process used to take out the caffeine creates chemicals such as chlorine, and these chemicals wind up in the coffee you think is so much healthier. If you want to avoid the caffeine altogether but you don’t want to give up coffee altogether, look for decaffeinated coffee in health food stores that have undergone an alternative, healthier process. And last but not the least, sugar. Other than contributing to diabetes and obesity problems, high levels of sugar in our body greatly increases our risk of panic attacks. The problem is, sugar is almost in all the food and drinks we take in everyday. Now even nutrition experts don’t expect us to suddenly stop taking in these substances and completely avoid them. Some individuals tend to have secondary triggers of anxiety when withdrawal from a substance is abrupt.