Panic attack is kind of a fit consisting of a mixture of severe fear, intense anxiety, and distress that appears suddenly. This fit gives the person such a dense fear and discomfort that the person feels that something bad will happen, or he/she will die. The person that lives through this fear storm naturally shows behaviors of escape and avoidance from that environment and situation.
SIGNS OF PANIC ATTACK
1. Palpitation, increased heart beats, feeling as if the heart will ponder out, pressure on chest, sometimes pain and numbness spreading to the left arm…
2. Perspiration and hot/cold flashes.
3. Shivering, shaking, feeling of being pushed
4. Choking and not being able to inhale (sensation of having a lump or knot in the throat, feeling of blockage)
5. Being out of breath (Need of getting deep breath, feeling as if inhaling is not enough)
6. Sensing squeezing, pressure, pain on the chest
7. Nausea, pain, inflammation in the stomach, gas, flatulence (sometimes the discomfort of uprising starting to spread from the stomach towards the throat)
8. Vertigo, feeling of dizziness, feeling as if you are going to faint.
9. (Feelings of unreality, events are perceived through the back of a smoggy curtain when there is panic, objects become smaller, everything gets blurry, or depersonalization (situation of being separate from the self, as is body and soul is separating and the person cannot feel and perceive himself/herself in its place, situation of getting strange to one’s own is formed).
10. Fear of losing control or going mad during panic (fear of damaging one’s own, children, environment)
11. Feeling of “my life will end now” during that moment, fear of death
12. Numbness, burning, tingling, bristling in hands, arms, legs, head, and throughout the body.
13. Feeling cold, trembling, or hot flashes
TREATMENT OF PANIC ATTACK WITH ACUPUNCTURE
Acupuncture is very successful in the treatment of panic attack disease as it is successful in the treatment of many psychiatric rooted discomforts. Acupuncture brings back the destroyed psychological balance in terms of suspicion, fear, and anxiety in panic attack patients. In order to do this, acupuncture increases chemical levels like endorphin, serotonin that are part of happiness and taking pleasure of the body by making changes in some chemicals’ levels in the blood. Moreover, with acupuncture cortisol is excreted in the body, which makes it deal with stress and get out of situations causing anxiety.
Treatment of panic attack and similar diseases with acupuncture;
The patient comes every day or every other day during the first 10 sessions. At the end of the 10 sessions, an interval of 7-10 days is given. During the following 3 weeks, sessions are continued twice a week for 3 weeks and then once a month for the following 6 months. In order for the disease not to re-occur, sessions are advised once or twice a year.
ACUPUNCTURE POINTS
Body acupuncture points:
GV 20,HT 7,PC 6,PC 7,CV 12,ST 44,ST 36,KI 4,CV 15,CV 17,Yingtang (the third eye)
LI 4-LR 3(Big Gate)
Ear acupuncture points:
Shenmen, kidney, antiaggression, heart, lung