Dr. Don Wood explains panic attacks as a gradual buildup triggered by a shift in oxygen and CO2 balance that signals danger to the brain. The loop can last up to an hour and often stems from unresolved traumatic memories that keep activating the nervous system, though he says these root causes can be fixed.
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There was a study done that shows that panic attacks are building for up to an hour. You're just not aware of it. So it starts to prepare on a very low level. It starts to Change the oxygen CO2 ratio by burning a little more oxygen to start getting you prepared for an attack. So then the signal comes from the body to the brain that we need more oxygen. That's interpreted by the brain that there must be a danger, we're losing oxygen, we must be running or we must be stressed. So it keeps looping. The physiological, the psychological start this loop and then it builds and builds until it gets to a point where it can't find a danger. But it assumes that it's going to happen. And it hits the panic and then the person has a panic attack. When you go to sleep at night, we dream. Dreaming is processing. So your mind is processing what you experience during the day, but it's also processing old trauma because it's trying to resolve it. So if it's running old traumatic memory while you're asleep, the same process happens in most cases. It just doesn't go away. I've known people who have had it 30 years, 45 years, so those obviously didn't go away. Why didn't it go away? Because the source information was never resolved. That keeps activating your nervous system. But you don't have to live, manage and cope with it. We can actually address it and fix it.