Panic Attacks and Smoking

There is a wide-held belief, held by smokers and nonsmokers alike, that smoking helps calm a person down.  After all, isn’t this why people smoke after eating dinner, or during a lunch break, or after a long day at work?  This belief, like many of the other common beliefs held in regards to smoking, has been shown to false.  In fact, much to the contrary, smoking, besides its damaging effects on physical health, can also have damaging effects, of equal or greater magnitude, on the mind as well.  Perhaps this claim is illustrated best when it comes to panic attacks, a disorder that smokers are liable to experience at a rate of 3:1 over their nonsmoking peers.

Panic attacks, which involve shortness of breath, dizziness, sweating, and chest pain, among the many other symptoms, may not simply be made worse by smoking, but may be the reason why these attacks are occurring in the first place.  According to Naomi Breslau, PhD, and Donald F. Klien, MD, of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, the relationship between smoking and panic attacks is substantial, with smoking increasing a person’s lifetime risk of having a panic attack by a staggering amount – perhaps, as they have suggested in their findings, by as much as three to four times. For those who have quit smoking, on the other hand, the chances of a first panic attack from ever occuring go drastically downward, although as of yet there has not been any research showing whether quitting smoking altogether has a similar impact on panic attacks.    

Tobacco smoke, Breslau and Klien argue, may heighten the chances of panic attacks in people who are already prone to them. Nicotine, furthermore, can play a role much like that of tobacco, since nicotine affects the brain in ways that researchers are just beginning to understand.  What these two researched have hypothesized is that cigarette smoke, and the accompanying toxins, including the tobacco, nicotine, but also the carbon monoxide, may lead to increased stress levels that, in turn, can spur a panic attack to happen.  As Klien states, “What we have in a panic response is the body’s stress response going full out. … In general, you don’t feel a soothing, calming feeling after you have a cigarette.” 

To avoid panic attacks caused by smoking, the best thing to do is to simply stop smoking.  Of course, the addictive qualities of smoking are well publicized, and as anyone who has been smoking will attest, quitting is quite hard.  However, one must weigh the pros and the cons, and as more and more research into the harmful effects of smoking is becoming clear, the negatives have been shown to drastically outweigh the positives.  No matter how it is looked at, smoking is not good for anyone.  Now, aside from the physical toll it takes on a person’s body, there is also reason to believe that smoking can lead to panic attacks, thereby destroying a person’s mind.  If this is not reason enough to stop smoking, what is? 

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