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Mental Health > Anxiety and Stress Forum > Is shortness of breath a sign of panick attack ?
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Q: Is shortness of breath a sign of panick attack ?
asked by: DoctorQuestion on February 9th, 2008
I'm a 24 year old female that has had my share of symptoms, all of which have never produced an explanation. I guess I'll just list the most recent events and see if maybe someone else can make some sense out of it. I had chest pain in the military for 5 years and they ran every possible test you could imagine and found nothing so they settled on anxiety and panic disorder. Fine but the medicines made me worse than before so I stopped taking them. I currently take something because I couldn't take the anger and depression anymore but it doesn't seem to give me problems. I have had over 60 UTI's and have had an irregular period all my life, which are manageable problems. I quit smoking last year and started chewing nicorette. 3 months later I started to notice a shortness of breath which one day led to a panic attack and a ride in an ambulance where they told me next time to talk myself out of it. Nice. Turns out I was allergic to Nicorette.Way to go doctors!! I smoke occasionally now but almost 1/4 of what I did before. Over the past three months I've gained 50 lbs for absolutely no reason so I went and had a physical thinking there must be something wrong with my thyroid or something to that effect. Nope. Nada. To top it all off I started to have the shortness of breath a couple days ago though not nearly as bad as it was with the Nicorette. I guess all in all I'm trying to make sure that all of these symptoms are just bad luck and not something crazy that a doctor is overlooking.


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Dr. Nikola Gjuzelov , MD
replied on February 20th, 2008
Anxiety and Stress Answer A3690
When a person subjectively " feels" symptoms without medical evidence (when every test is OK) the only remaining diagnostic possibility is neurotic disorder. Panic disorder is a kind of neurotic disorder wherein the person suddenly starts to feel dramatic symptoms like shortness of the breath or chest pain. During a panic attack the person is very scared and believes that the symptoms are due to some type of severe disease such as a heart attack. There is another neurotic disorder called hypochondria wherein a patient feels some symptoms all the time and believes that those symptoms are due to a real disorder. But no such drama occurs during hypochondria as it does during a panic disorder.

Nonetheless, before accusing hypochondria or panic disorder as the cause of these symptoms ... all real (organic) disorders should first be excluded. In your case, possible heart and lung disorders such as heart attack, angina pectoris, asthma, bronchitis etc. should be excluded first. If the medical tests don't show any presence of an organic disease then you cold be experiencing hypochondria or panic disorder. Furthermore, if you are aware that you are not organically ill, but have a feeling that you might be experiencing mental illness, you won’t need to visit doctors for various medical examinations. You can consult a mental health doctor instead.





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