billywhizz
01-02-14, 11:44
There are many people who are living through a stage in life where there are many daily challenges, and these people experience high levels of adrenaline all the time, or in isolated peaks. Anxiety is the term used to describe the clinical picture caused by a slow constant drip of daily adrenaline, while an intense rush of it suddenly entering the bloodstream is referred to as panic.
Being afraid of the way the fight or flight response makes you feel will prompt the release of more adrenaline, and that alone will shift anxiety up a gear and could possibly tip it over the edge into panic. A vicious cycle of fear of the fear evolves, in which your attention focuses on monitoring any potentially dangerous bodily sensations you may experience.
How & Where Does Adrenaline Act?
Shortness of breath
Palpitations/fast heart rate
Discomfort or pains in the chest
Feeling smothered or choking sensations
Feeling faint, unsteady or dizzy
Numbness or tingling in the extremities
Hot and/or cold flushes
Sweating
Trembling or shaking
Nausea, knot in the stomach or diarrhoea
Perceptual changes, feelings of unreality
Fear of dying
Fear of losing your mind or going crazy
Fear of losing control and doing something bizarre
An overwhelming feeling of terror, or ominous sense of something bad about to happen
When danger is anticipated, your brain sends signals to your sympathetic nervous system, to release neurotransmitters and prepare your body for action. At the same time it alerts the parasympathetic nervous system, to return equilibrium once the crisis is over. This ensures that the emergency response has a limit, and once this is reached the calming down process is initiated. So your nervous system can never get stuck in a 'panic' indefinitely.
Muscular effects - In order for our distant ancestors to fight with a predator, or for you to jump clear of an oncoming vehicle, your muscles will need to become instantly active and strong. If this is happening on a consistent daily basis, you may feel tense, restless or fidgety, your muscles may ache and you may even tremble and shake. Tension headaches, back pain, or jaw ache from clenching or grinding your teeth at night are all signs that you are suffering from high muscle tension. If the muscles in your throat tighten up it can sometimes feel like you have a lump there, or it may even be difficult to swallow.
Cardiovascular effects - Extra demands and pressure are placed on the heart whenever your muscles become more active. The quantity of blood it pumps around the body must increase rapidly to provide these working muscles with the necessary nutrients. The adrenaline release ensures that the heart rate rises and pumps more forcefully. The distribution of blood flow also evolves, it is redirected away from the limbs at the periphery, towards where it is needed for the vital organs. Adrenaline makes this change by narrowing the diameter of the smaller vessels and widening the larger ones that supply the required muscles. This has a survival value in that if your caveman ancestor got bitten on his hand or foot, he would be less likely to bleed to death, since there would be less blood there than usual. On a daily basis, it means that your hands and feet may often feel colder when your adrenaline is running high and you could feel pins and needles or possibly numbness in them, a natural bodily response to the reduction in blood supply to the nerves in the skin. This is why people often look pale after having had a fright, or bad news.
Respiratory effects - To prepare for action your body will need to take in more oxygen than usual. Adrenaline increases the number of breaths per minute, a symptom known as hyperventilation. This feels like breathlessness, choking, smothering sensations, sighing or simply an inability to get a satisfying deep breath. The effort may cause your chest to feel tight or even painful. A side effect of this faster breathing is that the supply of blood to your head is somewhat reduced. Although in no way is it dangerous, this can cause dizziness, blurred vision, loss of concentration and confusion, all unpleasant and frightening symptoms of anxiety.
Sweat gland effects - With so much activity going on with your muscles, your body temperature will rise, so in order to cool down you will produce more sweat. This response also has a survival value since it makes the skin slippery, so that a predator will find it harder to grab hold of you.
Other physical effects - digestion is suspended while adrenaline levels are high. After all digestion of your breakfast or lunch is not a priority when you are looking into the jaws of a lion, and can always be attended to when the emergency is over. This reduction in the function of the digestive system is felt as a decrease in saliva production giving you a dry mouth, nausea, a heavy feeling in the stomach, and diarrhoea and/or constipation.
Extreme fatigue is usually the end result of a chronically aroused nervous system. This is due to a combination of disturbed sleep, metabolic overdrive and the consumption of huge amounts of energy by yourself in the attempt to integrate and process the latest challenge.
A state of hyper alertness develops. This enables your hearing to become sharper, and your pupils to dilate to allow in more light, all with the target of gathering more information and increasing your awareness of potential dangers. Your brainwaves become predominantly of the faster type, known as beta, to speed up the process of identifying danger signals. Many who experience panic feel a constant buzzing or bursting feeling in their head.
Feelings of unreality or depersonalisation are common, and some individuals have out-of-body experiences when they panic. These are side-effects of some of the energy-field changes that occur during panic.
This post was taken from my blog on www.anxietyunited.co.uk (http://www.anxietyunited.co.uk), feel free to pop over and have a look around.
Being afraid of the way the fight or flight response makes you feel will prompt the release of more adrenaline, and that alone will shift anxiety up a gear and could possibly tip it over the edge into panic. A vicious cycle of fear of the fear evolves, in which your attention focuses on monitoring any potentially dangerous bodily sensations you may experience.
How & Where Does Adrenaline Act?
Shortness of breath
Palpitations/fast heart rate
Discomfort or pains in the chest
Feeling smothered or choking sensations
Feeling faint, unsteady or dizzy
Numbness or tingling in the extremities
Hot and/or cold flushes
Sweating
Trembling or shaking
Nausea, knot in the stomach or diarrhoea
Perceptual changes, feelings of unreality
Fear of dying
Fear of losing your mind or going crazy
Fear of losing control and doing something bizarre
An overwhelming feeling of terror, or ominous sense of something bad about to happen
When danger is anticipated, your brain sends signals to your sympathetic nervous system, to release neurotransmitters and prepare your body for action. At the same time it alerts the parasympathetic nervous system, to return equilibrium once the crisis is over. This ensures that the emergency response has a limit, and once this is reached the calming down process is initiated. So your nervous system can never get stuck in a 'panic' indefinitely.
Muscular effects - In order for our distant ancestors to fight with a predator, or for you to jump clear of an oncoming vehicle, your muscles will need to become instantly active and strong. If this is happening on a consistent daily basis, you may feel tense, restless or fidgety, your muscles may ache and you may even tremble and shake. Tension headaches, back pain, or jaw ache from clenching or grinding your teeth at night are all signs that you are suffering from high muscle tension. If the muscles in your throat tighten up it can sometimes feel like you have a lump there, or it may even be difficult to swallow.
Cardiovascular effects - Extra demands and pressure are placed on the heart whenever your muscles become more active. The quantity of blood it pumps around the body must increase rapidly to provide these working muscles with the necessary nutrients. The adrenaline release ensures that the heart rate rises and pumps more forcefully. The distribution of blood flow also evolves, it is redirected away from the limbs at the periphery, towards where it is needed for the vital organs. Adrenaline makes this change by narrowing the diameter of the smaller vessels and widening the larger ones that supply the required muscles. This has a survival value in that if your caveman ancestor got bitten on his hand or foot, he would be less likely to bleed to death, since there would be less blood there than usual. On a daily basis, it means that your hands and feet may often feel colder when your adrenaline is running high and you could feel pins and needles or possibly numbness in them, a natural bodily response to the reduction in blood supply to the nerves in the skin. This is why people often look pale after having had a fright, or bad news.
Respiratory effects - To prepare for action your body will need to take in more oxygen than usual. Adrenaline increases the number of breaths per minute, a symptom known as hyperventilation. This feels like breathlessness, choking, smothering sensations, sighing or simply an inability to get a satisfying deep breath. The effort may cause your chest to feel tight or even painful. A side effect of this faster breathing is that the supply of blood to your head is somewhat reduced. Although in no way is it dangerous, this can cause dizziness, blurred vision, loss of concentration and confusion, all unpleasant and frightening symptoms of anxiety.
Sweat gland effects - With so much activity going on with your muscles, your body temperature will rise, so in order to cool down you will produce more sweat. This response also has a survival value since it makes the skin slippery, so that a predator will find it harder to grab hold of you.
Other physical effects - digestion is suspended while adrenaline levels are high. After all digestion of your breakfast or lunch is not a priority when you are looking into the jaws of a lion, and can always be attended to when the emergency is over. This reduction in the function of the digestive system is felt as a decrease in saliva production giving you a dry mouth, nausea, a heavy feeling in the stomach, and diarrhoea and/or constipation.
Extreme fatigue is usually the end result of a chronically aroused nervous system. This is due to a combination of disturbed sleep, metabolic overdrive and the consumption of huge amounts of energy by yourself in the attempt to integrate and process the latest challenge.
A state of hyper alertness develops. This enables your hearing to become sharper, and your pupils to dilate to allow in more light, all with the target of gathering more information and increasing your awareness of potential dangers. Your brainwaves become predominantly of the faster type, known as beta, to speed up the process of identifying danger signals. Many who experience panic feel a constant buzzing or bursting feeling in their head.
Feelings of unreality or depersonalisation are common, and some individuals have out-of-body experiences when they panic. These are side-effects of some of the energy-field changes that occur during panic.
This post was taken from my blog on www.anxietyunited.co.uk (http://www.anxietyunited.co.uk), feel free to pop over and have a look around.