The symptoms begin suddenly, without warning -- difficulty
breathing, chest pains and palpitations. Some people feel
lightheaded and dizzy. Some sweat and tremble and
hyperventilate. A few even faint. These are the characteristics
of a panic attack -- a usually brief period of acute anxiety
often dominated by a feeling of losing control, losing one`s
mind or even dying. ``Most panic attacks are spontaneous.
Nothing in particular triggers them,`` said Dr. Jeffrey Brown, a
neurologist and psychiatrist from Palm Beach Gardens. ``People
get a sense of impending doom, that something horrible is going
to happen to them soon. ``Panic attacks are not a rare
condition,`` Brown said. ``I see new cases many times each year.
They don`t seem to affect either sex more than the other. ``An
individual attack typically lasts less than a half hour, but an
acute episode can last a couple of hours. They can be extremely
frightening and debilitating. A lot of patients end up in the
emergency room. Some people become afraid to lea