Your breathing suddenly accelerates, yet you're scarcely able to recover your breath. Nausea and dizziness combine with a hyper inflated heart rate. The surroundings seem to be collapsing around you. You're shaking and trembling. A heavy headache and pounding begins. You're destabilized, and fear and uncertainty crash heavily across your mind.

The anxiety panic attack has just begun.

Women have almost twice the rate of anxiety panic disorder than men, with an estimated 2 to 3 million Americans exploring techniques for overcoming anxiety. Anxiety panic attacks typically commence in early adult years and, unless identified and treated with either psychiatric counseling or medical or herbal intervention, can widen and deepen into profoundly life-altering phobias and ritualized and self-limiting behavior.

What Are "Typical" Anxiety Panic Attack Physical Symptoms? What others see, and what sufferers experience, is the gnawing crush of fear and uncertainty...immediately anti social and reactive behavior as the anxiety panic attack drives the sufferer to seek refuge.

Anxiety attack "triggers" could be anything. Spiders, cliff edges and heights, elevators, water immersion, divorce, public speaking, running into someone you dislike or who has provoked you. First response? Avoidance. Second and third responses? Instant-on anxiety attack, with full-on physiological play of stress signaling as heart rate rises, breathing becomes difficult, vision goes awry, dizziness kicks in. By now, merely "thinking" of the stress provoking situation triggers a full-on cascade of stress hormones including cortisol and corticotropin.

Isolation and anti social behavior is not so much externally directed as self-directed in order to create a "safety margin" where stress factors can be held at bay.

Sources Of Stress Lead To Anxiety Panic Disorder. By the time obsessive compulsive behavior sets in, the anxiety disorder sufferer is well on the way to a sustained chronic condition. Obviously, removal of key "triggers" is critical to overcoming anxiety.

What about "underlying causes"? Depression, alcohol and drug addiction and abuse, sustained stress, poor sleep and digestion create the optimal conditions that make a person vulnerable to an anxiety panic attack.

Natural Anxiety Remedy Options. For many panic attack victims, the aggressive chemical overlaps of prescription drugs, their gross interference with so many bodily functions and hormonal balance, move people to seek alternative solutions including acupuncture, meditation, exercise and even alleged anxiety herbs.

Natural serotonin and norepinephrine supplements have been shown to be productive in creating long term inhibition to anxiety panic attacks and depression. Getting serotonin levels balanced induces restfulness and improved sleeping.

Anxiety Meds. There's Big Money in anxiety disorder medication, especially when the intense need of sufferers intersects with speculative psychiatric theory and high-margin pharmacological drugs. Despite a litany of side effects including drug dependency, mental sluggishness, impacted speech, confusion, disrupted bodily functioning, sexual dysfunction and even the "rebound" impact of intensified anxiety panic attacks if anti anxiety medicine is forgotten or discontinued, prescription drugs are aggressively handed out to "help people get through the day".

The best programs for sufferers are professionally managed, combined psychiatric intervention along with carefully balanced dosages of FDA approved anxiety meds including recognized brand names like Prozac, Indoral, Xanax, Valium, Librium, Serax and others.