John, Thanks for sharing your story today. You have quite a gift for analyzing. Are you new here? Welcome to the Panic Center. There are many people here who are living with and beating panic disorder. Be sure to make use of the €˜tools€™ on the left of your screen, take the anxiety test and take the results to your Doctor, that way they will know exactly how you have been feeling. Keep posting your thoughts and concerns to the support group, they are very intuitive and helpful. Have you found a physician you can trust and be open and honest with. This way you can explain your symptoms and worries. John, you are at a point in your life where you want answers. With you continuing to find answers to your questions and concerns is an amazing step. Please continue to share your thoughts with us. We can walk you through our program if needed. Keep up posted! Josie

I wanted to share my personal experience with a panic attack and its aftermath. I experienced my first and only panic attack so far last Christmas Day at the age of 19. This is very long and a little disjointed but I wanted to compile and analyze all of the factors which contributed to my panic attack. This is more a personal therapeutic thing for me than anything else but I figured if anybody was interested in reading it and could give me any thoughts on it, that that would be helpful to me too. Like I say, I had to compromise clear structure for the sake of completeness. Here goes. That day (December 25th 2003) I ate a big breakfast and a huge lunch and, on top of that, a lot (and I mean a lot) of chocolate and candy, all of which were eaten with anxiety. (I wrote down everything I ate that day in case anyone's curious). So, I had (1) really high glucose levels in my blood (I had eaten a lot of high-sugar food) - a cause of anxiety. However, although I was very full all throughout the afternoon, I was not panicky or shaking. It wasn't until that night that I had the distinct panic attack (ie. several hours after eating a lot, about 7 hours since the meal, 3 hours since having the candy in the afternoon). The (2) full stomach (from the sheer amount of food I had eaten) caused the diaphragm to be pushed up, making breathing shallower. I also have allergy-induced asthma and interpreted this symptom as an asthma attack. I was also (3) very distressed about how much I had eaten. This is a symptom of binge eating disorder, which apparently is linked to panic attacks. Am I right? I was (4) in bed, under a heavy blanket that was practically smothering me (to add to the feeling of entrapment), when it started. The bed I was in is slept in about once a year so it probably did have quite a bit of dust/spores and who knows what other allergens in it which did cause (5) asthma symptoms of difficulty breathing. I was in a humid part of the country in a dusty humid house (ie. a lot of allergens), so the asthma symptoms were definitely there. IN HINDSIGHT, IT WAS A PANIC ATTACK WAITING TO HAPPEN, A TICKING TIME BOMB. The symptoms I experienced were: heart palpitations, increased heart rate, pounding heart, sweating, trembling, shortness of breath