The best way to prevent panic attacks for most patients is to make a few behavioral adjustments. Some of these adjustments include learning to manage stress and getting plenty of rest. Reducing the consumption of caffeine and other stimulants can be helpful for some people, and others can reduce their overall level of nervous energy by getting a decent amount of daily exercise. Sometimes the fear panic attacks cause can be self-sustaining, so patients may benefit from gaining a better understanding of panic attack symptoms. Once people understand what is happening to their body and mind during a panic attack, they often have an easier time controlling or handling the experience.
Some people try to prevent panic attacks by avoiding any underlying cause that may exist. For some individuals, the cause might be something like a phobia. Many doctors don’t recommend this approach because it can potentially be crippling, especially if the situation that causes panic is a regular day-to-day experience. Some people actually have more success purposefully exposing themselves to the source of the panic in a therapeutic way, which often helps them to gradually lose the fear. For many people, the exact cause of panic attacks can be harder to pin down; the attacks may actually be caused by many separate things, so this sort of approach isn’t really feasible for those people.
Many patients may not be able to prevent panic attacks on their own, and they may require treatment from a psychiatrist. When trying to prevent panic attacks, trained professionals often use a mix of medication and therapy. Sometimes they may also recommend lifestyle changes for the affected individual, depending on the underlying cause of the condition. The most common medications used to prevent panic attacks are anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants.
The symptoms of panic attacks can vary a little from one patient to the next, and some attacks are more severe than others. Common symptoms include hyperventilation or shortness of breath, pains in the chest area, sweating, and shaking. Others symptoms include rapid heart rate and a sense of temperature changes from cold to hot or vice-versa. Sometimes people having a panic attack may actually think they are dying, or that something terrible is happening to their body; this can actually feed into the condition, making it worse. Most experts agree that patients are basically experiencing an extreme fear reaction of increased adrenalin, which is very similar to what the body does when faced with a dangerous situation.
