What Inside the Body Contributes and Causes Anxiety Attacks? When you are talking about anxiety attacks and your body, it basically comes down to two systems inside your nervous system.
They are the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system.
They are the two systems that either get your body going or calm your body down.
They are on autopilot pretty much all the time and take charge during anxiety attacks.
Causes of nervousness, short breath, tingling, sweating, and heart palpitation can all be attributed to these systems.
What is the Sympathetic Nervous System? The sympathetic system is what gets you going.
It starts the engine in your "fight or flight" mechanism.
It releases adrenaline from the adrenal glands above your kidneys.
It causes you to breath deeper to get more oxygen to your muscles.
Something that is not well known is that increased breathing actually sucks blood away from the head.
This creates lightheadedness and sometimes nausea.
This can occur especially if there is no real danger and therefore no action taken to defend yourself.
What is your Parasympathetic Nervous System? Your parasympathetic nervous system does exactly the opposite of the sympathetic system.
It is what returns your body to its natural state.
After the perceived or real danger is no longer present, the body will naturally kick this system on and return everything to normal operating standards.
It cools you down, turns off the adrenaline, and calms you.
This is one reason, other than the physical toll the sympathetic system takes on you, that you are tired after anxiety attacks.
Causes of the attack aside, this is your comfort blanket and what you are looking forward to.
How Does Knowledge of these Systems Help Us?