Anxiety or Panic Attack

There is sometimes confusion between what anxiety is and what a panic attack is.  although both are very similar they do have distinct characteristics and differences.

Anxiety Attacks
An anxiety attack, sometimes referred to as a panic attack, is an unforeseen periods or incidents where there is a sudden fright or fear of intense proportions. These attacks focus on fears that are most often not rational; however the person with the disorder believes he or she is in terrible
danger or at extreme risk. Most often these anxiety attacks occur all of a sudden; i.e. they are not planned nor do they come with any type of warning mechanism built in for advance action. Results are that the person suffering the attack will feel about to faint or near death is door.

People who suffer anxiety attacks report the following symptoms, listed in no particular order:

1. Discomfort or pain in the chest
2. Vertigo or Dizziness
3. Upset stomach / Nausea
4. Loss of Control, Loss of Mental Stability Stress
5. Cold or hot flashes
6. Heart palpitations or near heart attack
7. Shallow breathing
8. Shakes / Trembling

Anxiety disorder is characterized as having anxiety feelings that are “always there / all inclusive,” make people want to isolate themselves from society and hamper everyday activities with others.

Panic Attacks
On the other hand, a panic attack does not carry with it that “always there” association. In fact, panic episodes generally burst forth, peaking after roughly 10 minutes or so, then ending after about 25 minutes.

During a panic attack, 4 of the symptoms listed below (in no particular order) generally make an appearance:

Shallow breathing, even to the point of suffocation
sensation…

1. Increased heart rates
2. Tightness of chest
3. Shakes / Trembling / Sweating
4. Choking sensation
5. Upset Stomach / Nausea
6. Vertigo
7. Surreal feelings
8. Loss of Control, especially of mental faculties
9. Death coming on
10. Numbing
11. Cold or hot flashes

The Difference
The main difference between anxiety attacks and panic attacks is in the duration of the attack and how intense it is for the person with the affliction. While anxiety attacks are less hi-stress, they tend to last longer than the
power-packed panic stressors. Of course there is much more written on both disorders to help people learn how to deal with them in depth.

Give Me A "K"!

Low levels of potassium in your body can increase anxiety and irritability.  You are probably wondering what the heck Potassium is anyway. Well, potassium is an essential mineral that regulates the functioning of heart, digestive system and blood pressure. Also, it is important for efficient functioning of the brain and other neuron functioning.

The great news is you don’t need to go to the store and buy potassium supplements. You can get most of your daily required potassium, around 3500mg,  from everyday foods.  It is important to note however, that potassium works together with magnesium and sodium to produce optimal functions.  Being that most Canadians, and Americans, eat too much sodium to start off with, you are probably already getting more than enough sodium in your diet.

When might you need more potassium?

Potassium is easily lost in the urine, and if large amounts of salt is ingested ( we consume way too much salt in Canada and USA). If you are vomiting a lot, have some serious explosive diarrhea or extreme sweating you may require more potassium. Also, if your diet is based largely on processed foods, caffeine, alcohol or if you take any sort of diuretic or laxitives you may want to consider taking more potassium.

What foods contain  potassium?

Foods that are high in potassium include: Apricots, Avocado, Banana, Cantaloupe, Honeydew, Kiwi, Lima beans, Milk, Oranges, Potatoes, Prunes, Spinach, Tomatoes, Vegetable juice, Winter squash.

Foods that are moderate in potassium include: Apple juice, Asparagus, Beets, Blackberries, Broccoli, Carrots, Cherries,Corn, Eggplant, Grapefruit, Green peas, Loose-leaf lettuce, Mushrooms, Onions, Peach, Pears, Pineapple, Raisins, Raspberries, Strawberries, Summer squash (including zucchini), Tangerines, Watermelon.

Foods that are low in potassium include: Apples, Bell peppers, Blueberries, Cabbage, Cranberries, Cucumber, Fruit cocktail, Grapes, Green beans, Iceberg lettuce, Mandarin oranges (canned), Mushrooms, Peaches (canned), Pineapple (fresh), Plums.

Wayne Cho is running across Canada to raise awareness about anxiety and depression

Wayne Cho, a fellow Canadian, is running across the country (8,200km) in order to raise awareness about Anxiety and Depression.

After suffering with Generalized Anxiety Disorder for most of his childhood and young adult life, it was only at the age of 30 that he finally realized what the uneasy feeling in his stomach had been all these years.

Wayne wants to eliminate the stigma that surrounds mental illness and he wants health care providers and people suffering from such illnesses to know that their illnesses are treatable and are more common than most people think.  Over 20% of the population in Canada suffers from some sort of mental illness, but many are afraid to talk about it, in fear of being looked at as crazy or odd.

By not openly talking about anxiety or depression only makes the problem worse.  It is for this reason Wayne Cho is running across Canada — to get people talking about this common health issue, so that people can get the help they need as soon as possible.

If your interested in supporting Wayne in his efforts to run across the country, you can visit his website at CrossCanadaRun.com for more information.  He is currently looking for road crews, athletic therapists, and a media whiz. You may also contact him directly at wayne.cho@crosscanadarun.com.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) affects about 4% of the population every year. GAD is twice as common in women as in men. GAD usually appears in childhood or adolescence. Worries tend to be about normal things (work, money, chores, etc.), but to an exaggerated degree. In It’s called “generalized” because there’s no particular source of fear. The cause isn’t known, but children of people with GAD are more likely to develop anxiety problems.

Although the cause may be unknown, I do believe that if you look at your genetic chemical predisposition and couple that with your life events and circumstances (triggers) you will be able to identify what is causing this sort of anxiety disorder. I suffered from mismanaged GAD most of my childhood and early adult life, it’s not fun!

Panic attacks and panic disorder: Panic attacks are extremely common - 10% to 20% of the population experience a panic attack at some point in their life. People with phobias may have a panic attack if they encounter the object of their fear. Panic disorder is much less common. It’s recognized as recurring feelings of terror and fear, which often come on unpredictably, without any clear trigger. Most panic attacks last a couple of minutes, but can continue for up to 10 minutes. After a while, fear of panicking becomes a sort of phobia in itself, as the person tries to avoid situations that might provoke one. Panic attacks can begin at any age, but most often begin in young adults.

I experienced my first panic attack at the age of 8. I was at home sitting on my parents recliner when my heart started racing and I felt like I was going to lose control, I had difficulty breathing and felt “out of it”. I literally could see my heart pounding out of my chest, it was so scary. I also would experience panic attacks in social settings ( not large groups, but rather smaller more intimate groups of people of say less than 10 people).

Phobic disorders are irrational, intense fears about a particular object or situation. Phobias are common, affecting more than 1 in 10 people. Some phobias begin in childhood, such as fear of animals, the dark, or of strangers, while others usually appear in adulthood, as in phobias of weather, water, heights, flying, or enclosed places. The inconvenience of a specific phobia depends on how likely you are to encounter the object of your fear. The most debilitating types are agoraphobia and social phobia. Agoraphobia (literally, “fear of the marketplace”) is anxiety about being caught in public situations when panic develops. It can develop after an embarrassing public panic attack. Social phobia may be a general shyness or fear of particular situations like public speaking. It tends to be more common in women but more severe in men.

I just finished doing a search for a list of phobias. Wow, there are literally thousands of known phobias that we as humans suffer from. The list is enormous, everything from the fear of bald people, chins, ice, heat, paper and old people. Instead of listing them in one big index, I’ll try and seek out people who suffer from these phobias and interview them and upload them to the site in the form of podcasts and videos. I may even go over the list and see what phobias I may have and tackled them head on. I know one for sure would be to go scuba diving — I have a hard time breathing through a snorkel…instance panic attack of not being able to breath.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is equally common among men and women, and affects about 1.6% of the population every year. These people are bothered by recurring images or ideas that are unpleasant (obsessions), or they develop repetitive habits or rituals (compulsions). The images and ideas may be connected to the repetitive habits. For example, people who fear infection may wash their hands constantly, or those who fear burglars may repeatedly check that the door is locked. Sometimes there’s no connection at all between the thoughts and the rituals.

I’m a perfectionist, but not to the point where it has taken over my life. I’m very methodical and I hate when things are confusing and complicated. I like simple. I guess that is why I admire companies like Apple Inc. They make simple look easy.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and acute stress disorder are the only types of anxiety with a clear cause. Extreme anxiety often appears after a frightening or horrible experience, particularly if injuries or deaths were witnessed. Acute stress disorder comes on quickly after a traumatic event and lasts less than a month. Feelings are often complicated by feelings of guilt, unworthiness, and betrayal in those who have survived a stressful experience but lost loved ones to it. PTSD, a longer-lasting, more severe form of acute stress disorder, is particularly common among war veterans.

I remember going through this type of disorder after my car accident. I was returning home on the highway from a conference in Kingston, Ontario ( about two hours away from my hometown) when I was struck by a tractor-trailer while trying to merge into the lane off the on-ramp. The tractor-trailer tore the whole driver side of the car to shreds and send the car flying, stopping short of hitting a cement wall. Luckily I wasn’t hurt, but I did experience heightened levels of anxiety afterwards. It took me a while before I felt comfortable traveling on the highway beside tractor-trailer, but the fear eventually went away.

Jason Herrington
Hates Being Categorized

Coffee and Anxiety....Up In A Tree...

After identifying coffee as one of my triggers responsible for my heightened anxiety a few years back, I’ve curbed its consumption.

Recently; however, I’ve started drinking coffee more regularly, whether it be store bought at a local cafe or prepared at work in my office’s employee kitchen. I’m reminded of the powerful physical symptoms associated with this caffeine-induced buzz. The faster pulse, sweaty palms, pounding heart are all physical symptoms of caffeine induced anxiety.

Caffeine is the most widely used mood-altering drug in the world. You can find caffeine in your coffee, teas, sodas, and those “natural health supplement” energy drink. For most people when they consume coffee (caffeine) it produces a sense of alertness, concentration, and memory. This works because caffeine blocks the depressant function of a a chemical called adenosine. Drink more coffee than you are use to however and that same chemical reaction produces the jitters.

Why is it that one person can consume coffee and feel alert, a greater sense of memory and well-being while others do not? The answer is simple, those who are more susceptible to anxiety tend to think that the physical symptoms associated with the intake of caffeine is the signs of some impending doom. While some people may identify coffee as the trigger and give it up completely, many others tend to give up the activities they were engaged in when the symptoms showed up.

For example, you drink a large coffee in the morning prior to going to work, jump on the subway and while on the subway you begin to experience the symptoms mentioned above: racing heart, sweaty palms, faster pulse — instead of identifying the coffee (caffeine) as the trigger you think you have a fear of the subway, or crowed places, or people — and if you continue to believe that to be true, you may end up fearing that which you falsely believe to be at the root of your problem.

So how do you eventually deal with it all? Some psychologist would recommend you limit your caffeine intake until you are better able to identify the physical symptoms associated with a caffeine-induced buzz. Other psychologist would prescribe you a large cup of java in order for you to self induce yourself — to face the fear head on.

I think ordering a tall cup of java and inducing your own caffeine-anxiety-buzz is the best way to do it. The reason I say that is because it give you the opportunity to interpret the symptoms. A fast beating heart is no longer the signs of upcoming heart attack, but rather the normal reaction to a stimulant like caffeine. By exposing yourself to the fear head on you can begin to distinguish unfounded panic from real threats. Although you won’t feel great, you will learn that you can experience the symptoms and nothing terrible will happen.

The idea here isn’t to eliminate coffee (caffeine) from your diet. It’s about being moderate and realizing that the physical symptoms you are feeling are those caused by the anxiety and not something impeding doom.

Jason Herrington
Enjoying Every Last Drop

As I sit here typing this post I realized that everyone is different. We all live in different cities, have different cultures and are going through different life events and situations at any given time. Since anxiety triggers are often related to a chemical imbalance in the nervous system, life experiences, or both…I think it is important to outline how I have come to understand the way it all plays out.

It is my understanding that both genetics and life events come into play, life events however being the dominate factor in most cases. It looks something like this:

Genetic Predisposition + Life Events = Anxiety Outcome

GENETIC PREDISPOSITION
It is my opinion that we are all born with some sort of chemical predisposition. Whether it be tilted in your favor or not. If you look at it as a balance, some people may be born with the balance being tilted more towards being prone to heightened anxiety while other people may have a balance that is neutral or tilted the other way. Whatever the case may be, there isn’t much you can do about it — so there is no use complaining about the type of DNA your parents gave you. Like the game of poker you are dealt a certain hand, and it is up to you to play it the best way you can. In terms of anxiety management, playing the best hand you can play is all about creating the right life events/environment or at the very lease understanding the life events or environment that may be causing your anxiety triggers.

LIFE EVENTS
I’m a firm believer that the environment you surround yourself in controls your way of thinking and behavior much more than your chemical predisposition. Like I mentioned above I firmly believe that we are all born with some sort of chemical predisposition. Whether that predisposition is tilted to be easily prone to heightened anxiety or not, your environment can impact you in either direction.

Let me give you an example. I was born into a family who has a genetic history of being prone to heightened levels of anxiety, depression…etc. My childhood; although being amazing (my parents rock), was still full of highly stressful events. These stressful events and situations in my life tipped my chemical disposition far to the side that was prone to heightened anxiety. And because at the time I had no clue what anxiety or a panic attack was, I develop negative thoughts around my symptoms which literally fueled the fire which resulted in countless days and night of feeling “out of it”, shortness of breath, tension in chest, sweaty palms, tinkly hands, dizziness, rapid heart, and thoughts of dying or heart attacks.

Let me give you another example, using myself again. Let’s say that I was born, again into my current family with the same chemical predisposition of being prone to heightened anxiety. But this time instead of going through times of highly stressful events, I never experienced any highly stressful events or sudden changes. Would this have helped prevent my anxiety from being heightened? In my opinion, absolutely. However it still doesn’t mean that as I grew older, perhaps even into my adult years; that I could not be faced with some sort of event that could tilt the balance and make me experience heightened levels of anxiety. I’m actually glad it happened at a young age ( first anxiety attack was at age 8). Although I suffered with mismanaged anxiety for most of my childhood and young adult life, I’m happy it happened sooner than later. At least now I am 26 and have been able to manage my anxiety successfully for over three years by simply understanding its symptoms, its triggers, my thought process, and my responses to it all.

Some of the triggers I have found to heightened my anxiety are:

1. Constant negative stress in life (childhood) re: family challenges, money issues, sibling rivalry, family members bouts with depression.
2. In my young adult years - constant negative stress of life ( fear of failure and at the same time the fear of success). The feeling of not having control of my time, sudden change of plans, consumer debts.
3. I also realized that coffee, alcohol, energy drinks, and a diet high in sugar also triggers my anxiety. Prior to knowing about anxiety symptoms, I’d enjoy a coffee — and later that day wonder what the heck was happening to me, little did I know the coffee (caffeine) was triggering my anxiety, combine that with negative though patterns around the physical symptoms and yikes … I thought I was going to die or have a heart attack.

These are just some of the triggers or events that I noticed heighten my anxiety. Knowing that these things heighten my anxiety, I no longer create any sort of negative thought process around the physical symptoms they make me experience, instead I know what is going on, and no longer think that I’m having a heart attack, am going to lose control, or die. What a relief!

Here are some other life event triggers that may effect you:

• Some medical conditions such as anemia and thyroid problems can cause symptoms of anxiety.
• Coping with a serious physical illness like cancer can make you anxious.
• Concern over diagnosis and treatments can lead to excessive and overwhelming anxiety.
• Certain drugs such as caffeine, alcohol, diet pills, and stimulants can cause anxiety.
• Constant negative stress in life (such as worries about one’s job) can lead to general chronic worry and anxiety.
• Many anxiety disorders run in families and likely have a genetic predisposition

ACTION STEP

The goal of this post is to give you a generic idea of what could be triggering your heightened levels of anxiety. Only you know what you are going through. Everyone is different. We all come from different backgrounds, live in different environment, and have experienced different life events

Take a moment and think of what is going on in your life right now and what you may have experienced in your past — also take a close look at what you are eating and/or drinking. Are you doing through a divorce? A bad relationship? A new job? The feeling of not being able to get ahead? Maybe a new baby? Do you drink a lot of sugary sodas? alcohol? drugs? How was your childhood? Did you maybe lose a parent? maybe you moved a lot? Had an alcoholic father or mother? Only you know what your past was like. Take a moment and and think of all that has happened and all that is happening to you currently. You will begin to realize that often times many of these life events tend to tilt your balance and make you experience high levels of anxiety.

Jason Herrington
Tricking The Triggers

There is a great quote I found recently that sums up the idea of knowing the truth about your symptoms . The quote is by Ansel Adams, an American Photographer, best known for his black and white photographs of the American West.

“There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.” Ansel Adams

For years I had a brilliant image of what was happening to me; however the brilliant image I had about what was happening to me wasn’t the truth. It was, like Ansel Adams said, a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.

A fuzzy concept indeed! For years I thought I was going to die, had breathing problems, felt “out of it” in a way where I felt detached from my surroundings — I wondered what was going on. There were times where I felt like I may lose control and be embarrassed. And other times I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat; shaking uncontrollably. It was a scary feeling.

Not being aware of the symptoms of anxiety would make my mind race, as I thought of all the the negative things that could be happening to me. Am I having a heart attack? Am I going to die? What is wrong with me!? Am I going to lose control? Why do I feel “out of it” or spacey?

I’m you are or have suffered from anxiety you can definitely relate with some or all of the above. However; I wanted to list other symptoms that you may experience when dealing with heightened levels of anxiety.

The common symptoms of anxiety disorders can include:

• chest pain or discomfort
• choking
• chronic and exaggerated worry and tension
• dizziness or faintness (actual fainting is extremely rare)
• fear of dying
• fear of going crazy or losing control
• feeling a lump in your throat
• feelings of unreality, strangeness, or detachment from the environment
• feeling tired
• flushes or chills
• inability to relax
• headaches
• hot flashes

• irritability
• muscle tension
• muscle tension
• nausea or diarrhea
• numbness or tingling sensations
• palpitations (”fluttering” in the chest) or accelerated heart rate
• recurring unpleasant thoughts
• repetitive habits (e.g., washing hands)
• shortness of breath or smothering sensation
• startling easily
• sweating
• trembling
• trouble concentrating
• trouble falling asleep or staying asleep

Looking over the list, I experienced 23 of the 27 symptoms during the time I suffered with the mismanagement of my personal anxiety.

When you understand the symptoms of anxiety it gives you power. It gives you the ability to stop thinking negatively about what you are experiencing. It gives you the strength to look at what in your life may be causing you to experience these periods of heightened anxiety.

The next step is to uncover what’s triggering your heightened levels of anxiety? I’ll explore this idea in my next article. stay tuned.

Jason Herrington
Knowing Thy Symptoms

Your Reality Is About To Get Its Ass Kicked, Again.

This post is a continuity from yesterday’s post about a critical mass of consciousness.  Yesterday, I wrote about the ideas in the book, The Celestine Prophecy, and how a large population of the world is beginning to realize that there is something more to life then what we have been taught and are accustom to.

In order to explore this idea of what more to life there is, we need to understand how we got to where we are today, we must look at the longer now.

What exactly is meant by a longer now?  A longer now is a way of looking back over a period of time and trying to understand how the attitudes, perceptions, and consciousness of  the people at these times in history have brought us to where we are today.

We typically look at history in scope of technological advancements and growth, but what a longer now approach does,  is look deeper into the collective thoughts and feelings of the people at any given time and how this collective consciousness shaped that era and those that followed.

I have for some time questioned my current reality and that of most of the world.  The idea of constantly striving for more economic growth cannot sustain itself indefinitely.  We cannot continue creating more stuff, for the sake of creating more stuff, just because it acts as the oil that keeps this economic machine working.

How did we get to this point? What the heck happened?

Here is a brief history lesson. The Dark and Middle Ages saw a worldview where we were the center of God’s universe and anything that happened could easily be explained by being that of God’s will.

Severe drought? God was mad. Great crops? God was happy. Get it? People lived in a geocentric worldview where everything could be explained as being cause by God.  Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun revolved around it.  This was the reality of the times which  of course was endorsed and taught by the Churchmen and those in power.

Then the people  saw corruption in the Churchmen, people got curious, people started questioning, and they slowly discovered that everything they were once taught about their reality wasn’t entirely true.  This prompted the creation of the “Scientific Method” as a means to understand our world.

The Scientific Method was a way of making an assumption of what is, testing it out, and proving or disproving the assumption , thus coming to a conclusion that validates or modifies the assumption.

So, with this new tool in hand we sent out explorers to figure out how our world worked and report back to us.

Something happened though. It took longer than expected to get an answer to how the earth worked and why we were here.  In the meantime, as we waited for answers, we decided to use our new knowledge and technological advancements to create a more comfortable life for ourselves in this new worldview.

The problem is, we got preoccupied in thinking that making a more comfortable life for ourselves was the  reason for living.  We completely forgot about why we started on this path of discovery in the first place.

Things are about to change, and it can be summed up by saying “Everything’s Amazing, but Nobody’s Happy”.  Growth, New Gadgets, Larger Homes, Faster Cars, Easy-Done-In-5-Minutes Meals…..is making life  more comfortable, but it’s not making us happy.  It can’t. It never will. It never was meant to.

Our reality is about to get shaken, just like it did over 400 years ago, the sad part is we are starting back where we started only this time we can do it from comfy chairs.

The Celestine Prophecy

Last night I decided to pick up the book The Celestine Prophecy from my bookshelf and reread it. It seems that every time I read that book, it puts me in a better frame of reference in regards to the world around me.

If you’re not familiar with the Celestine Prophecy it’s a story about a secret manuscript that was discovered in Peru. The manuscript is said to have nine ( a new tenth insight was released later) insights about human consciousness and awareness and is said to predict a new change in human existence.

The first chapter focuses on synchronicities, or in laymen terms, noticing what would normally seem like random or chance-like events and seeing them as having more meaning.

What is a synchronicity? Let’s say you were thinking about an old friend that you haven’t seen in a while, you head out to the mall and you run into them. Without a heightened awareness of the event, you would simply assume it was random or chance-like, and you would probably not pay too much attention to it, other than it seeming odd, considering you were thinking of your friend earlier.

The first chapter talks about a global restlessness where more and more people are starting to awaken from the daily grind of modern life and are starting to feel or sense that there is something more to life than the cyclical routine we’ve been taught to accept as the normal way of living.

The first insight predicts that at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century a critical mass of people will begin to feel this sense of restlessness. What is meant by a critical mass and why is it important?

A critical mass is a tipping point. It is the minimum amount required to cause and sustain a  chain reaction.  It is important to understand, because as more and more people start questioning their reality as it has been taught and start seeking a deeper meaning to life, humanity will soon start experiencing a heightened awareness and consciousness, which will begin to radically change the world.

I have always felt deep inside that the way things are, aren’t really as they seem.  This led me on a journey of uncovering truth over the past 24 months.  What I have learned is that much of what we are taught is designed in a such a way to empower some and confuse the masses into a state of mass hypnosis, where the masses are too busy trying to make a living, that they rarely take a minute and question what is going on.  It takes much effort to find truth and many rather not be bothered. However; this is changing, and a critical mass is developping.

I was pleased to see that Robert Kiyosaki, the author of the best-selling Rich

Conspiracy of The Rich

Dad Poor Dad series of books,  has recently released a new book entitled “The Conspiracy of the Rich” in which he exposes the truth about money.  I always had this feeling that the idea of inflation, deflation, and economic cycles where in some way not the norm.  I then discovered that our monetary system ( one now based on debt and credit) both here in Canada and abroad has been used to enslave the masses into perpetual work and debt.

I see Robert Kiyosaki’s book as helping to create this critical mass, where more and more people are beginning to awaken to what is truly going on and by gaining insight into the world around us, we’ll be better able to understanding why things happen and how we can change.

If you have ever felt that there must be more to life or if you have ever sense that there was a deeper meaning to events (synchronicities), feel free to share your story as a comment, I’d love to hear from you.