There are millions of sufferers of an anxiety disorder called GAD, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  While this growing disorder is well understood by the medical community, with widespread success in its treatment, it is widely misunderstood by average Americans. Until recently it was believed that this disorder was driven by an early existence of depression – especially within perhaps an already stressed person – and that was exacerbated by lifestyle and a stress-laden life.  Now it is clearly recognized that GAD is unique to the patient involved but also fits other disorders in terms of environmental and even hereditary causes.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a medical condition that takes ordinary levels of anxiety and stress-related tension in our lives and propels them into dangerous levels that alter our ability to manage a normal life and can even cause a panic attack.  Your physician will probably have you on a regimen of altered physical and lifestyle changes and medicatin.

We don’t know definitely what causes normal levels of anxiety and stress to spiral into a life-altering condition like GAD, with clinical results often yielding conflicting conclusions. We do know that there are reasons why it occurs more often in certain lives and lifestyles than others and that is the focus of this article.

Nonetheless, there is a cause or it wouldn’t occur in as intense a series of levels that it does.  Therefore, the search goes on for definitive causal sources and, hence, their prevention.   The evidence suggests the following causes of GAD:

1.  The basic chemistry of the brain in typical GAD sufferers show the following: A) Abnormal levels of certain neurotransmitters and their related, partially understood, chemistry; B) The presence of toxic levels of the body’s standard chemical solutions to stress, namely cortisol and adrenalin.

2.  Environmental Factors – The existence of environmental issues like abuse, over-strictness of parents, death, divorce, etc., especially in patients who are already stressed can produce immediate and radical cases of GAD.

3.  Genetics – It has been theorized, though not proven scientifically, that a predisposition or susceptibility to the acquisition of GAD may be genetically linked.

Obviously, most people who have contracted GAD are interested in just how they came to spiral from normal levels of anxiety and into a full-fledged case of GAD and how that knowledge will help them. The experts all agree that unless strong environment or genetics are involved, there are good early indications for significant improvement and elimination of anxiety attacks and this condition overall.