Anxiety and Panic “Attacks”

In the past year nearly 45 million Americans have suffered from so- called “anxiety disorders”, including anxiety and panic attacks, as well as phobias. That’s a lot of people—more than 15% of the U.S. population.

And it’s a lot of suffering. Anxiety leaves people chronically miserable. A severe panic attack leaves people in cold sweat terror dreading they are dying.  And phobias leave people painted into a corner of fear and nasty limitation.

Anxiety disorders have become such a problem in the last 30 or so years that they are now recognized as the #1 “mental health problem” for American women and second only to drug and alcohol abuse for men.

But to label anxiety a “disorder” or a “mental health problem” risks confusing the issue. And it risks shaming the sufferer and leaving them prey to the vultures who seek profit and power by defining life problems as medical conditions, so they can medicate as many people as possible.

Just why are fear, anxiety and phobias so prevalent today? Just what has gone on in the last two to three decades that’s given rise to so much fear and anxiety?  I’m very clear on the one word answer because I’ve spent many years researching the problem. It’s STRESS.

Stress is the chief cause of most anxiety, panic and social phobias. But stress is not just about feeling tense and wired. It’s about the triggering of our hard-wired “Fight or Flight Response”.  And it’s about the release of toxic hormones—drip, drip, drip—into our system. These hormones seep into our blood and tissues where, over time, they set up conditions for “attacks” of fear, anxiety and panic.

In the last 30 years we’ve gone through about 400 years of social and technological change.  It’s been hard for humans to adapt to such speed. In a nutshell, the stress problem is rooted in the fact that we’re not properly hard-wired for this fast paced, complicated and too often meaningless way of life. We’re wired for a time that is long gone.

Many people feel lost today. They feel lost having to cope with a life that often makes little sense, a life lacking in clear cues and clues about how to live. And not only are many people under unrelenting financial and work strain, but often their souls also must endure an unsatisfied longing for a loving connection to life and a meaningful connection to other people.

Anxiety, panic, phobias, depression, addiction and many degenerative diseases such a s heart disease and diabetes—are an outcome of the fact that we are chronically stressed out.

Consider what happens during an anxiety or a panic attack: Suddenly with little or no warning, an anxiety and panic attack sufferer’s heart starts pounding. They have trouble breathing, their chest aches, they start sweating and feel fearful that they’re losing control and they’re about to die—for no apparent reason.

They stand there shaking and trembling in terror, but they have no idea why. And as if this isn’t bad enough, they are left anticipating that all this will happen again—at any moment, a moment they have no control over.  This anticipatory worry releases more stress hormones and sets up conditions for a vicious cycle of recurring panic attacks.

Now imagine the following. Imagine that you are on a vacation in the Florida Everglades. You are out one early morning in a canoe with your expert guide. Suddenly, unexpectedly—you’re guide loses consciousness and falls over, capsizing your canoe. Then more trouble. Thirty yards away on shore there are two alligators.  They see you and enter the water. They are coming at you fast— to eat you for lunch. How would you feel?

Like this—your heart would be pounding, you’d have trouble breathing, your chest would ache and you’d be shaking and trembling in terror. You’d be thrown into a Fight or Flight Response where you’d have to fight or flee to survive—or die.

What happens to you in an anxiety or panic “attack” is amazingly similar to what happens to you in an alligator “attack”—except in the latter you know why. Stress hormones play the key role, hormones whose real purpose is to prepare you for a life or death struggle.

With this knowledge, it’s easier to understand why there are so many people experiencing “attacks” of fear, anxiety and panic, and we why so many people would rather stay at home where it feels safe.

The key to preventing and controlling anxiety and panic attacks is to lower your stress hormone levels and flush stress hormones out of your blood and tissues.  To learn more about this, you can download my “Little Black Book of Stress Relief Secrets” FREE at the top right of this page.

Don’t hesitate to get expert therapy for anxiety and panic—you can overcome them both.

225,000 Innocent American’s Killed Last Year – You Won’t Believe How…

The United States has the most expensive health care system in the world. But not only is it among the least effective, it’s also a killer.

Would you believe that doctors and hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America? Only cancer and heart disease take more lives annually (and stress drives both).

How can this be? Aren’t doctors the ones to call and aren’t hospitals the places to go when we’re ill? Perhaps so-but as medical research indicates-we do so at considerable risk.

Dr. Barbara Starfield of the John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health published her research findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), findings that show clearly that America’s health care system can be dangerous to our health. Here’s how dangerous: 12,000 people die annually from unnecessary surgery; 27,000 people from hospital errors; 80,000 from hospital infections, and 106,000 people from drug side-effects. This sad state of affairs costs the American taxpayer $77 billion annually.

Drug Side Effects Are A Scandal

You’ve seen the TV ads right, for drugs for make believe diseases like “erectile dysfunction”. At the end of the ad there’s sweet music in the background while someone tells you if you have an erection for more than four hours go to your nearest hospital. More seriously, listen to the side effect warning for drugs that include liver failure, heart failure and stroke, among others. Well these “side effects” as they are euphemistically called-actually happen. And they do kill people in significant numbers.

The drug side-effect deaths are especially scandalous because drug companies throw a ton of money around to gain influence over doctors, universities and even the FDA. They do this to make even more money selling Americans drugs, dangerous drugs they often don’t really need.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the drug review process does not ensure that harmful medications won’t be approved for public consumption. The approval review for new drugs cannot be trusted when the reviewers are being paid by the companies making the drugs. These same companies spend billions of dollars marketing and promoting their drugs to physicians, physicians who too often fall prey to the marketing hype or to the financial rewards they get from a company for prescribing its drugs.

Greed and Manipulative Marketing

The drug company Pfizer, for example, was forced to pay $425 million plus in 2004 to settle unfair marketing charges. Pfizer marketed the drug Neurontin, by, among other things, flying medical doctors to high end resorts and paying other physicians to ghostwrite articles hyping the drug.

Even more worrisome is that Dr. Starfield cautions us that her findings are very conservative because they involve numbers from “in hospital” patients only. Moreover, her figures are “death only” statistics; they don’t include a tally of people who’ve been harmed or disabled, in or out of the hospital, while under medical care.

Protect Yourself-Take Action

The good news is that you can take steps to protect yourself from becoming a health care statistic. First you need to stop thinking of your physician as Yoda-as some all knowing being whose advice you can passively follow. Many physicians are outraged at what’s going on in medical care today, and they are in the front lines to change things. Such physicians welcome patients willing to actively inform themselves. The internet offers good sources to gather information about our medical concerns. A useful one is the Consumer and Patient Health Information Section at http://caphis.mlanet.org/consumer/.

Many hospital deaths typically result from errors of commission, things that should not have been done but were done; or errors of omission, things that should have been done but weren’t done. Hospital workers are typically overworked and so prone to make errors.

Make Sure You Have an Advocate When You Move Into the “Sick Care System”

It’s a good idea to have a friend or family member serve as your advocate while you’re in a hospital, an advocate who stays with you and protects you against errors by asking firm questions and settling for nothing less than good answers. You and your advocate should also work to make sure you get in and out of a hospital as quickly as possible. The best way to avoid hospital based infections, infections that are especially strong and dangerous, is to get out of a hospital quickly.

The fact is that we don’t have a health care system-we have a sick care system. We get tested and treated only after we’re ill. The system does little to help us prevent illnesses before they happen. And very often we get too much very expensive testing and potentially dangerous treatment, including drug treatment.

You should know why you’re being tested and for what, and you should understand the reasons and risks for any treatment prescribed to you.

Here’s Your Best Protection

Your best protection against doctor and hospital errors is to stay healthy. Don’t imagine your doctor will be able to help you at all times, and don’t follow her like a sheep. Be active in safeguarding your health. You probably won’t live long and well unless you do.

Most importantly, you need to learn how to get free from stress.

As the World Health Organization declared, stress is the #1 health problem in the entire developed world. Stress hormones put you at great risk. They drive heart disease, including sudden death and stroke, as well as cancer, diabetes and other serious illnesses. Stress hormones also trigger anxiety and depression. Because your doctor gets most of her information from drug company reps, there’s a good chance you’ll get drugged for stress related problems including anxiety and depression. Most physicians were not trained in the mindbody science needed to understand and relieve stress. Job stress can be especially dangerous.

Research also shows that you’ll stay much healthier if you walk for 20-30 minutes at least 4 times a week. It’s also important to avoid eating too many refined carbohydrate foods loaded with chemicals to enhance taste and extend shelf life. Ditto high saturated fat meats filled with growth hormones, antibiotics and fillers.

One of the most important predictors of health and well-being, and so of minimizing doctor and hospital based risks to our health, is to be happy doing what we truly want and love to do. Make the effort to avoid settling for less.

Beware: Financial Stress Epidemic

Financial Stress is Contagious

Financial stress goes to the bone of our deepest worry–staying alive. Money represents survival. That’s why money is so important and why so many people are stressed out over finances.

Stress is contagious. In the same way that there can be a flu epidemic that infects many people-financial stress can spread rapidly among many thousands and even millions of people.

Right now we are in the midst of an outbreak of serious financial stress, an epidemic of financial stress fueled by a combination of real and dangerous conditions and the never-ending bad news media hysteria. The news media no longer just reports news. It seeks profits, profits that depend on ratings and ratings go up with sensational news broadcasts.

Unfortunately this creates real problems for us.

Because if the financial crisis doesn’t damage us, our chronic stress over it will. You see a part of your brain called the hypothalamus cannot tell the difference between financial worry and financial disaster.

The Media Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

For example, one financial trend forecaster, Gerald Celente’s, did an interview recently. He’s predicting a total worldwide financial collapse, a collapse worse than anything ever known. And he’s predicting violence in America over it.

It’s a tricky situation because no one really knows whether the roof is going to fall in from this financial crisis or not.

But at the level of runaway financial stress-it doesn’t matter. Because when large numbers of people are infected with stressful concerns, their minds can become enmeshed in a form of primitive and illogical thinking where it become impossible to distinguish fact from fiction.

Today many people are in this bind. They watch CNN blasting yet another financial collapse story, they read more of the same in the newspaper and on the internet, they go shopping to see prices rising again and then they go home and open their financial statements to see that they’ve lost even more money than they imagined. No wonder so many people are anxious, fearful and depressed.

It’s starting to feel like a meteor is heading to earth and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

Whenever I feel myself getting caught in media stress, I do a little MESICS Free Release BreathingTM and then if need be I use another technique to enter into the Stress Free State TM, a state of relaxed and aware calm and balance. When you move into the Stress Free State, stress hormones are flushed out of your blood and tissues.

I’ll show you how to do MESICS Free Release Breathing in just a few moments. But first, let me explain something important to you.

Your Fight or Flight Response prepares you to fight or flee from life threatening danger. It does so by releasing powerful chemicals, called stress hormones, into your system. But there’s a problem: The Fight or Flight Response is meant for short-term use only. If it’s on too often and too long it will damage your mind and body.

Studies show that when you’re stressed and stress hormones seep into your blood an tissues and linger there, you’re at risk for serious health problems as well as the misery of chronic anxiety and depression.

As Dr. Paul Rosch, President of the American Institute of Stress put it, Stress

“…is a heavy contributor to heart disease, cancer, respiratory distress, lupus and many other life threatening illnesses.”

Stress hormones are indeed bad news. Drs. Lyle H. Miller and Alma Dell Smith, two Senior Stress researchers said it in a nutshell: “Chronic stress kills. People wear down. Stress is linked to the six leading causes of death….”

Do This: MESICS Free Release Breathing

Take 3 deep “Free Release Breaths”. This strategy is drawn from a MESICS® [1] Training routine.

• Breathe deeply into your diaphragm-it’s just under your breastbone and above your upper abdomen
• Pause for a slight moment
• Breathe out from your diaphragm-
  • but don’t walk your breath out-just freely release it. HHHAAAAA.
  • Pause for a count of two-then repeat

Notice that at the end of the out breath there’s a calm, relaxed state. Tune yourself to that and let your stressful thoughts go. Don’t go after them or spin them or feed them. Just let them be. They will go away. Yes, they will return. When they do, just do the same thing.

The 3 Free Release Breaths are a preliminary technique to help shut down your Fight or Flight response. If you can learn to let your thoughts go-it will stay shut down more often. Learn how to develop the presence of mind to not jump on every train of thought that pulls into your station.

Financial Worries Are Not Facts

Stressful thoughts and feelings about money are often not accurate or true. But when you’re caught in contagious financial stress, they will present themselves to you as if they were absolute fact. Yes you may have money problems, even severe ones-but that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t survive.

Please don’t think I underestimate the hardship of serious financial trouble, I don’t. But even if you’re bearing a heavy burden -you’ll be a lot better off if stress hormones aren’t running around in your system.

If you’ve been foreclosed or close to it or if you’ve watched your life savings shrink along with the value of your home. All the more reason you need to safeguard your well-being so you can get on the other side of this hardship.

If you learn how to stand free from stressful financial worry, you won’t get poisoned by toxic stress hormones. Learning how to do this is a form of mindfulness and what we call “Inner Fitness”. Inner fitness will strengthen your ability to avoid identifying with your worries. If you do identify with your worries, you’ll mistake them for facts and pay a steep price.

Develop a Prejudice Toward Action-Act NOW

STOP listening to, watching or reading sensational news stories about financial doom. If you’re facing chronic financial stress, learn how to develop an action plan that will empower you to feel in control. Seek help doing that-from reliable sources.

Expect financial worries in the form of negative thoughts and feelings. Expect to feel fear, anxiety, depression, self-doubt and self-blame. These are natural. But learn how to stand free from them and not buy into them at levels that cause you hopeless despair and panic.

If You Pray, Pray for This

The more action you take, the more control you’ll feel and the more control you feel, the more action you’ll take. If you pray, don’t pray for money to drop out of the sky-pray for the patience, confidence and strength to get through this and to make the money you need.

Think positively, but positive thinking alone is not enough. You must marry it to decisive action. Or else you’ll be waiting for a bus that doesn’t come.

Get angry if you have too. But make it a healthy anger-let it become fuel for you to take charge and act. Healthy anger can free you up and push you into a new way and a new day.

Consider working with a capable stress expert and a financial advisor you can trust.

Take the Long View

See your financial woes as a temporary challenge not as a final defeat. Don’t just think short term-think up ahead. And take things one day at a time. Again, get expert help-don’t move off in an unknown direction on your own.

And beware of people who don’t know enough to really help you. Or people who’ll want take advantage of your situation. Make sure you can trust someone before you give them any money and don’t pay anyone a large sum in advance.

If you have a lot of debt, or are at risk for foreclosure, then consider contacting The National Foundation for Credit Counseling: www.nfcc.org

This Too Shall Pass

Keep in mind that “This Too Shall Pass”.

Be thankful for the little things and for any support you can count on from people who care about you. The philosopher Nietzsche said it well when he noted: “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.

While that’s not always the case, it most often is. Necessity can be the mother of invention. By meeting the challenge of financial stress, you’ll master new learning and open up new possibilities in your life.

Your thoughts and feelings define your reality, so avoid news media that sensationalize the financial crisis by blasting you with it from every doom and gloom angle possible.

Again, studies show that we’re very susceptible to the opinions those around us. So take a holiday from opinions that breed more and more fear and worry in your life. Just focus on today and tomorrow.

I invite you to download my new book, “The Little Black Book of Stress Relief Secrets”. It’s Free for a limited time-get it on the home page. It will give you much of what you need to know and do.

---

[1] M-E-S-I-C-S is an acronym for the Latin phrase “Mens Sana In Corpore Sano” It means: A Sound Mind in a Healthy Body. MESICS Training™ translates scientific discoveries into actionable knowledge and combines it with powerful tools and expert support—so you can put that knowledge to work to conquer stress and live long and well.

Work Stress: An Epidemic is Destroying Lives