As a retired nutritional psychologist I have a different view of what causes anxiety attacks. I have successfully treated many thousands of people with anxiety attacks, when I worked as a nutritional psychotherapist. Anxiety and panic attacks are also related to many other so called mental disorders such as depression, insomnia, weight gain, ocd and ptsd and many other personality disorders.


Most people believe that anxiety attacks are caused by 'mental' triggers and people desperately try to control these mental cues in the mind. When they fail they may feel that they are weak-willed. This is based on the false assumption that that the mind always controls the body.


It is true that when we experience an environmental stress, stress hormone produced to deal with the problem, interfere with the production of feel good neurotransmitters, like serotonin.


In that sense excess adrenaline production causing us to be anxious has survival values.


But some people produce too much adrenaline, not because of anything happening in the environment or in their mind, but because of some internal malfunctioning in biochemistry. In other words anxiety attacks is a sign of an endogenous abnormality, over which the mind has no control. No amount of "willing", or rational argument can rid a person of such attacks, how hard they try.


To understand what is going on, one needs to realize that adrenaline is a hormone that helps the body to increase blood sugar levels. In moments of emergencies, it diverts biological energy away from non-essential bodily functions such as digestion to the autonomic system. Energy is diverted to the heart, and other organs required for strenuous action to deal with the 'emergency'. These hormonal reactions explains the wide variety of symptoms in anxiety attacks ranging from heart palpitation, hyperventilation, sweating, vomiting, muscle pain, digestive disorders, and so on.

Sugar and carbohydrates are the source of biological energy called atp. Without this biological energy, derived form the sugars in food, the body cannot produce the feel good neurotransmitters such as serotonin. Adrenaline is not only a relaxing hormone, but also a focusing hormone forcing the person to concentrate his mind and all his energy on the "enemy". This explains the occurrence of obsessive compulsive behaviour in ocd.


The brain relies on a steady supply of glucose as its only source of biological energy to run its biochemical machinery.

If there is an obstruction in that supply for only a few seconds the brain goes into a panic mode and sends a hormonal message to the adrenal glands to pour adrenaline into the system. This triggers the conversion of sugar stores - glycogen - back into glucose to feed the brain again. But adrenaline also triggers a fear response, except that there is no external source of fear. Hence we have an irrational fear response that the sufferer of anxiety attacks cannot explain.


The reason why the brain may be deprived of energy is that people with anxiety attacks - and for that matter many other forms of mental illness - usually have insulin resistance. There are many studies showing a significant association between depression and insulin resistance.


In fact if you test people with anxiety attacks with a a four hour medical test for hypoglycemia, you will find that most prove to be positive to the test. There is also a paper-and-pencil test called nutrition behavior inventory test (nbi), that will indicate a metabolic disorder if you score high on that test.


Thus although blood sugar levels may be above normal, insulin resistance prevents energy entering into cells, including the sensitive brain cells.


This may lead to the hypoglycemic syndrome, which among others causes depression and anxiety attacks.


The non-drug treatment for this condition is the adoption of the hypoglycemic diet under the supervision of a clinical nutritionist.


This explains why anxiety attacks is really a nutritional disorder, a concept that is often difficult to accept among people who are not aware of the nutritional biochemistry of mental illness.

The good news is that this condition can virtually be treated by the person himself without having to pay a cent to any professional.


Jurriaan plesman ba (psych) post grad dip clin nutr
author of getting off the hook
free articles at: hypoglycemic association of australia