Hi this is Ben Brennan from Austin, Texas. I'm coming to you on behalf of Expert Village
and today we're going to be talking about panic attacks. Okay now I'll like to talk
about the hereditary or the genetic influences on developing panic disorders or panic attacks.
Having a family history of panic attacks is a good sign that you might be more free dispose
to having panic attacks than if you didn't have a family history of that at all. But
that does not mean that if your mother, brother and sister and everyone in your family has
panic attacks, then you're necessarily going to start having those and it also doesn't
mean that if no one in your family has a history of panic attacks, then you're free and you
will not develop those. But it is just something to look for. If you have a family history
you want to be more cautious about your stress and anxiety level. The way your genetics influence
the development of panic attacks is that genetically or because of what is in our family history
and the genes that we inherited, some of us have a higher base line of stress and anxiety
than others. So some people will go through the day pretty easy going laid back, they
don't get really excited about anything; if they run out of gas it is not a big deal,
they miss their lunch break, or they get to work late, they're not too stress about it.
They can kind of take in strive naturally. Some people are more pre-exposed to stress
and what will happen is they will be late for work and they will get really anxious
about it. What's going to happen? I'm I going to get fired? You know even when there is
nothing they can do about the situation. They run out of gas or they miss their lunch break,
the stress will build up over the day and they'll start to become really anxious. And
so what we have is different base lines for different people with anxiety. Now if you
have a higher base line of anxiety that you inhereited from your mom or your dad or just
that you developed because of something in your genes or something biologocially. What
can happen is when you experience those day to day events your anxiety continues to rise
and it can get to the point where you can actually develop a panic attack. Or having
a base line of anxiety that's higher than the average, you're higher than a more relaxed
person can cause you to develop panic disorder or panic attacks whenever you do encounter
a stressful situation. So having that naturally higher anxiety can really contribute to develop
your panic disorder. It doesn't mean that you're going to have a panic attack but it
is something to look into and your response to this could be if you notice that you're
having a higher anxiety, probably the best thing to do is work on that. Think about ways
to relax and there's plenty of clips on this series about how to relax and how to prevent
panic attacks. So it's just good to know yourself, know what you're pre-exposed to and work from
that.
