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Subscribe to RSSThat sinking feeling in your gut? Don’t worry: it’s probably appropriate for our times. It may be due to your foundering finances, your slippery hold on employment, or the sudden realization that you love “Glee” just a bit too much.
For the medical record, however, a nagging anticipation that something wicked this way comes is a listed warning sign for at least eight illnesses or conditions.
Heart attacks, aortic dissections, adrenal gland tumors, some seizures and severe allergic reactions all share one clairvoyant-sounding symptom: “an impending sense of doom.”
One form of epileptic seizure may offer the best case study to explain this amorphous, dark disquiet, this brand of bad-health ESP. That’s because these seizures – abrupt surges of electricity activity within the brain – occur in a lower, middle swath known to fuel this apocalyptic vibe.
“The temporal lobe involves the emotional circuitry of the brain,” says Dr. David Ko, chief of neurology and director of the EEG Lab at the Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center. “Some patients with temporal lobe epilepsy get this psychic or emotional component.
“They get this panicky feeling that something really bad is going to happen,” says Ko, who co-authored a recent article, that touched on this eerie symptom. “Some people have describe it as being like an impending sense of doom.”
Such seizures are not sparked by actual stimuli. And, he adds, they are far different from panic attacks – anxiety disorders that include feelings of approaching calamity but which typically peak after 10 to 20 minutes. Seizures sparked by temporal lobe epilepsy “have a discrete beginning and end, one or two minutes,” Ko says.
But why would heart attacks or instances of abrupt bleeding into and along the wall of the aorta (the main artery pushing blood out of the heart) lead to this same Doomsday sensation?
“If you’re having any chest pain, you get very anxious. The circulatory system is part of the (brain’s) emotional system,” Ko explains. “If you think you are having a heart attack, the heart starts racing, your blood pressure goes up.”
This sends neurotransmitters – chemical messengers -- surging toward receptors in the temporal lobe, igniting a vague but an urgent alarm: “Uh oh….”
Allergic reactions – including those caused by certain foods or wildlife stings – can similarly set off the body’s “fight or flight” neural-response, and light up those same communication pathways.
At least one famous work of literary fiction tapped into this irrational feeling of looming disaster, Ko notes. In his famous book, “The Idiot,” 19th century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky created a main character who suffers from epileptic seizures.
“That character had that sense of doom,” Ko says. “Dostoyevsky is a well known person who had epilepsy. He wrote about his symptoms. And obviously, his work is very dramatic and (the general mood of his tales) is not a pleasant one.”
Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.”
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The explanations offered here are missing the point. The sense of impending catastrophe is probably NOT coming from pain (which happens too late to qualify as a premonition); from temporal lobe activity (most catastrophes don't involve temporal lobes any more than other brain areas); or from a stray panic attack. All physiologic catastrophes include the release of neurotransmitters and cell-to-cell communicating chemicals which broadcast like a dispatcher the type, size, location of the problem and issue specific calls for cells to come fight the problems. Often the only 'physiologic evil' going on in the beginning is a growing pool of inflammatory chemicals, like smoke hovering above the brush fire. Just as a dog indoors a mile away may smell the fire and warn his owner before the brush fire overtakes the house, some areas of a working brain may catch the whiff of these chemicals. And those brain areas do their job well, producing unpleasant emotions which will be bound to a) get noticed and b) stimulate rapid changes in the owner's activity until c) something is done to stop the damn inflammation. It's all about neurotransmitters, cytokines, hormones, on and on. Mr. Briggs writes well, but needs to think more deeply about his topics before setting pen to paper.
I didn't have a panic attack. I didn't feel undo pain. But like the reporter wrote, I knew something wicked this way comes. And that was while I was still lacing my boots.
That said, a great post by Choices.
I felt unDUE pain reading about your undo pain.
Guess and speculation. Pseudo-science. Seizures have prodrome, so heart attacks must, too. Complete junk.
Every time anything bad happens, 82% of people report having had a bad feeling before it. This is selective memory, not true prediction.
Cut the junk science. This is an embarassment.
Nah, the 'impending doom' factor is just a reaction to something occurring in the body. This also happens with panic attacks with have similar symptoms to a heart attack so, when this @!$%# happens to me, I just take a deep breath and realize the worst thing that could happen is that I @!$%# myself after I'm dead.
I disagree. My wife and I are both emergency medicine professionals, and the 'sense of impending doom' is a well recognized symptom of serious problems. Not always, not the person screaming over a splinter, as some people are just dramatic. But when someone looks you in the eyes and calmly says "I'm think I'm going to die", they are often correct.
There are specific syndromes, like cardiac events or aneurysms, that when physical symptoms are accompanied with the quiet feeling of impending death, you had better pay attention and get on it in a hurry.
Why this is, I don't know. We can hypothesize all day long. But the medical community has know this for a ling time.
My daughter had pheochromocytoma, a rare adrenal tumor. The 'sense of impending doom' is often felt in people with this disease. Pheochromocytomas produce a rise in the production of catecholamines, the hormones commonly referred to as our "fight or flight" hormones. This causes many symptoms such as high blood pressure, rapid heart beat, sweating and can also bring on an intense sense of impending doom. I'm glad to hear some medical professionals do recognize this as something to be paid attention to.
I love a great lede.
Great job, Bill Briggs!
Huh??? What did he say? I just couldnt follow his disjointed style of writing. It makes no sense, and it was too difficult to follow what he was trying to say so I just gave up.
this is a dumb article. makes no sense at all
I have experienced this just before a perecardial effusion. In the back of the amulance they hit me with the defibrillator three times on the way to the hospital.I Thank god there was a top cardioligist on duty when I got there and he performed a cardiac catheter insersion using just ultra sound.That was in 2005.
I am in good health now thanks to this surgeons skill.
If this was true, I would have been dead a long time ago. As a matter of fact, yesterday was pretty crappy, and today doesn't look much better. LOL. Impending sense of doom? Yeah, right. Oh wait, Mom may come and visit. Yep, doomed, I tell ya, doomed.
He is absolutely correct. This is the sensation that I experienced prior to having my heart attack back in 2003. I had this uneasy feeling that something was just not right. This was well before I started experiencing any chest pains or any discomfort from the attack itself.
I have a serious heart condition, and one evening, after my wife had gone to sleep before me, I was in the bathroom, getting ready to go to bed myself. All of a sudden, I had a sudden sense something was just not right, even though I felt perfectly fine, so I woke my wife up, and I asked her to sit with me a while. The next thing I remember, I was in an ambulance, and then I was in the hospital.
Apparantly, just a few moments after my wife joined me, I collapsed, she had to call 911, and performed CPR on me until the paramedics arrived a few minutes later. Had I not awoken my wife, I wouldn't be sharing this story with you now.
As someone with epilepsy, i wouldn't say it's impending doom, mor eso an aura. Wavy feeling, it is very strange. The fear comes right before it's going to happen, you think you're prepared and know what to do, make sure you're going to be ok, but the moment right before... pure terror even though you tell yourself you're going to be fine. It's a strange thing. The body is an incredible thing
I absolutely feel that sense of dread or panic before a seizure. As my seizures come on very quickly, I don't know if there is any way of knowing if I feel the dread before the aurau or a split second after. As Ninganja says, it may be part of the aura sensation (dizziness, nausea). A sense of dread during an aura is a logical feeling. I know I'll feel crappy after a seizure. There is the possibility of falling and seriously hurting myself, I could go catatonic.
None of these is somthing to look forward to.
I had something opposite , yet similar happen to me. I had had a bad cough for a while. My daughter kept telling me I had blue lips, she is a worry wart so I paid little attention to her. While I was shopping for make up, the girl behind the counter mentioned I had blue lips. I gave it a second thought and then forgot about it.
A few nights later while getting ready for bed, I got this wonderful feeling of well being! Just like I was wrapped in a warm comforting blanket. I went to bed happily, only to wake up a bit later coughing up blood. Of course I called the Doctor who sent me to the Hospital, I had a severe case of what we laymen call walking Pneumonia. There was very little oxygen getting to my brain...hence the feeling of euphoria. Weird!
I have this feeling very very frequently prior to a seizure. I just know that something is wrong, but can't say exactly what. I never really thought about it, but "impending doom" is not a bad description at all. I now know that I must change my environment (lighting, wind, colors) quickly or I will have a seizure very soon. Interestingly enough I happen to be reading Dostoyevsky's book The Idiot right now and certainly can relate.
Understand that there are wildly varying forms of epilepsy, mine is unusual in that this feeling happens quite some time before the seizure hits (5 to 20 minutes), in which case I consider myself very lucky.