Written by: Nimra Khan / Voice / December 01, 2021 / 10 minutes read

Our voices are not something we often have to put much thought into, until something goes awry. Although voice disorders are often associated with neurological conditions, such as nerve damage, there are many behaviours and events in daily life that can cause voice damage as well. When the voice is damaged, it can sound rough, ‘husky’, and/or weak. This could be due to many reasons, including (but not limited to):

• Sore throat 

• Acid reflux 

• Speaking or shouting too much over an extended period of time 

• Consuming many irritants over an extended period of time (to be discussed below) 

These reasons can range from having the flu to giving long presentations at work in one day. It is often only at this point that it becomes clear just how important our voices are in our daily lives. I can still remember a time almost 3 years ago when I completely lost my voice, and as it slowly returned, it was very rough and uncomfortable. Hearing myself, I really could not recognize whose voice this was. An extended period of rest, hydration, and avoiding irritants helped to return my voice to normal. Just as we consider overall hygiene and cleanliness in other parts of our day, our voices can benefit from care as well. This is often the first step in maintaining a good voice, especially if you find that you are straining your voice often. This is also related to Muscle Tension Dysphonia.

The main purpose of vocal hygiene/care is to manage behaviours to reduce anything that might cause damage to the vocal tract. I think it’s helpful to remember that the vocal folds are a muscle and, similar to many other muscles in the body, they benefit from stretching, practice and rest. What is the purpose of stretching before someone runs a race? Part of that is reducing the amount of effort it takes and also reducing the misuse of muscles. In addition, it would be even more helpful to reduce effort before it happens.

Do you:

• Drink a lot of alcohol?

• Drink a lot of coffee and/or tea?

• Work or live in a dusty or smoky environment? 

• Smoke?

These are all types of irritants for our voice box. If your voice is already tired, weak, or strained, more exposure to any of these factors can cause more discomfort for your voice. For example, if you had to raise your voice a lot for an 8-hour day in a noisy workplace, your voice will be more difficult to project over time. Here are some ideas to manage this: 

• Reduce amount of voice use when not at work (even for a couple of hours)

• Reduce how much alcohol or caffeine you drink (even for a couple days)

• Of course: drink more water!

The most difficult aspect of vocal hygiene can be finding a routine or strategy that fits with your daily life. Just like any change in habits that you might try to make, changing our habits around vocal tract hygiene can be difficult too. If you’re unsure if any of the factors listed above are having a negative effect on your voice, try keeping a voice diary. Sometimes increasing awareness to your voice can help identify where your difficulty might be. To create your voice diary, make a table with each day of the week listed at the top, and more rows with morning, afternoon, and evening. The last thing you will need is a row to describe how your voice sounded/felt for the day. When trying to identify why your voice is not feeling 100%, this can be a great place to start.

At this point, we all are aware of the negative impact of stress hormones on the body. Over longer periods of time, this can also add to strain on the voice box. When we are speaking, a lot of coordination is required between breathing, vibration of the vocal folds, and shaping sounds with our mouth. This is all possible due to various muscles in this pathway, especially around the face, neck and shoulders. Being mindful of tension in these areas can lead to a better understanding of when you are straining your voice. 

In stressful situations, it is often difficult to recognize tension in the jaw, neck or shoulders. Just as I described a runner stretching before a race, if you are going to enter a stressful situation such as a big presentation, try to complete some stretching before this, too. Stretching and relaxing these muscles is similar to an athlete. Some exercises to try a few times include:

• Raising your shoulders to ears and dropping them

• Scrunching up your face very tight and releasing

• Stretching the jaw by pretending you’re eating gum

• Roll the shoulders forward and backward 

If you are interested in learning more about voice, Goldberg discusses the gendered voice. If you feel that improving your breathing could also be helpful for you, try our Breathing for Communication (free!) online course.

To speak with one of the speech-language pathologists at Well Said: Toronto Speech Therapy, schedule an initial consultation by clicking the link below or calling (647) 795-5277.