Voice Academy: Template

Welcome to the Lounge!

Is your voice resilient enough to withstand the rigorous demands of teaching? New scientific findings may spell R-E-L-I-E-F.

Click on the illustration to find out how new research can help you.

Vocal fatigue: the facts

Strictly speaking, our voices don't tire. Voice, after all, is air from the lungs chopped and shaped and carried in waves to the listener's ear. Our structures that create the voice, however, can tire, work inefficiently or become damaged from overuse.

Symptoms include:

Dry mouth;
A need to clear your throat;
Hoarseness;
"Scratchy" or raw feeling;
Achy feeling in your neck;
Feeling winded;
A general feeling of weakness when speaking;
Frequent breaths or running out of breath;
Reduced volume on high or low pitches;
Tension in the neck, shoulders and upper chest.

Right now, science can provide no magic number for recovery time needed to overcome vocal wear and tear. A big obstacle is the huge range of vocal "robustness" among people.

Are your voice muscles tired?

Infrequent or hard exercise makes our muscles ache. The same goes for muscles required for voice. The muscles around the ribs (intercostals) and abdomen expand and contract to provide breath for speaking. Loud or excessive talking may make these muscles tire.

Some people then fall into the unhealthy habit of overusing muscles of the neck to "push" the voice. These little muscles can't fully and consistently do the work of the big muscles of the abdomen and rib areas. Thus, the neck muscles are worn out before the teaching day is over.

Muscles tire as "good" chemicals (nutrients, etc.) are consumed and waste products (lactic acid) build up in muscle fibers. Our blood flow transports nutrients to muscle fibers and carries away lactic acid. Because our circulatory systems work constantly, chemicals exchange fairly quickly. Thus, people recover from muscle fatigue fairly easily.

Cell wear and tear

When you feel your voice dragging at day's end, consider:

human vocal folds collide 100-1000 times per second;
vocal folds collide many hundreds thousands times per day;
increasing pitch and volume increases vocal fold friction;
high or loud talking makes vocal tissues tire faster;
most teachers speak frequently each day, five days a week;
teachers get limited recovery time (quiet time) during the workday.

Nowhere else in the body do tissues have such mechanical demand. The body's response is to protect: vocal nodules or cysts may form. While these growths cushion the blow, they also make vocal folds vibrate less efficiently.

Even the safest and most healthful talking or singing causes destruction vocal fold cells. Vocal cells must constantly replace old, damaged cells with fresh ones. Quiet time, or recovery time, is necessary for regeneration to keep pace with destruction.

Relief from the research lab?

A joint research project at the universities of Utah and Iowa hopes to replicate vocal fold cell destruction and recovery in lab dishes.

By growing small samples of cells in the laboratory, specialized equipment can imitate the vibration and stresses that the cells would experience in the body during speech. Stressed cells can then be scrutinized as they attempt to recover.

Early results indicate that damaged tissues produce cells that are less pliable and thus vibrate less efficiently.

This seems to reinforce the common sense notion that — following damage — we must give our bodies adequate time to heal.

Recovery by the numbers

When it comes to recovery time, professional athletes have it made. Sports medicine research identifies appropriate recovery times for different stresses on body tissues:

Professional basketball players play every two to three days;
Baseball pitchers hit the mound once every three to four days;
Title-contending boxers compete once or twice a year.

A general rule in the field of athletic training: Recovery times need to match the amount of localized tissue injury that has occurred. (Note: This does NOT mean recovery time needs to match performance time.)

Acute damage to joints, ligaments, tendons, and other connective tissue, may take days, weeks or months to recover. Recovery from general muscle fatigue, though, is usually quick.

Vocal pacing?

Even the most healthful speaking leads to wear and tear of voice tissues. Usually, our bodies cope with the housekeeping and repair tasks well. But the high vocal demands of teaching may push the vocal system over the edge.

New research at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts may soon help teachers through the day by identifying the best balance between talking (lecturing) and non-talking (student-managed) activities.

For example, what would the healthiest pattern during a two-hour block of teaching?
1) Talk 60 minutes, recover 60;

2) Talk 30 minutes, recover 30 minutes, repeating the pattern twice;

3) Talk 10 minutes, recover 5 minutes, repeating the pattern eight times.

Early results show that even small vocal "naps" (#3 above) interspersed with speaking reduces vocal fatigue.

A vocal diary

Teachers need not wait for scientific research to provide specific guidelines for voice recovery. Rather, we encourage informal experimentation on your own.

Develop a simple vocal diary. Track voicing activities (including any episodes of screaming or yelling), hormonal cycles, symptoms of reflux disease, sleep adequacy, off-duty voicing demands, weather conditions, illnesses, allergies, alcohol use and other relevant factors.

Compare these notations against daily vocal symptoms (early morning "groggy" voice, general hoarseness, sense of effort, pitch change). Review after several weeks to identify any patterns.

Did an awareness of vocal pacing benefit you?

Bright idea # 1

Some strategies for healthy vocalization have more to do with your ears than lips.

Take for example, the Lombard Effect. It's simply your adjustment of vocal loudness according to the loudness level you hear. You've likely noted the comical, overly loud manner in which a person wearing a Walkman speaks.

Consider situations when the Lombard Effect has influenced your speech: chatting in cars or restaurants; social gatherings; the classroom. How many times have you found yourself speaking over a noisy heating system, loud outside traffic, or 20 noisy, wiggling students?

Remember: loud talking is particularly taxing to the vocal tissues. We theorize that some people may be hyper-sensitive to the Lombard Effect, and may be speaking at a volume far above what is truly necessary to be heard.

In other words, don't overdo the Lombard.

Bright idea # 2

Speaking healthfully in a noisy world

Other than keeping tabs on your Lombard Effect, how about taking steps to reduce environmental noise rather than speaking above it? Here are a handful of real-life suggestions beyond the classroom:

Instead of speaking above the car radio, turn it off.
Ask the restaurant host to seat you at a quiet table or request that the music volume be lowered.
At social gatherings, stand close to your conversation partner and/or move to a quiet corner for discussion.
Read or rest rather than converse on noisy trains or buses.
At home, don't shout above the TV or over others' conversations or across the room. Stand close to your conversation partner.
Watch your vocal volume on your cell phones. People tend to shout into them, perhaps because of real or perceived noisy connections.

No Smoking...please!

Smoking is all-around bad news for your voice:

Cigarettes keep voice-producing tissues constantly irritated, and over time, tissues change as a protective mechanism. This is why heavy, long-term smokers' voices are often low in pitch.

Smoking marijuana is even worse, burning as hot as 400 degrees.

Smoking lowers the pressure in the valve joining the esophagus to the stomach, sometimes allowing stomach acids to "back up" in the throat and onto delicate voice tissues.

If this isn't bad enough, be aware that 85 percent of head and neck cancers are linked to tobacco use. Smoking cigarettes is a major contributor to the most devastating laryngeal disease diagnosis a person can receive — cancer.

At the very least, smoking decreases lung function. Without good lung power, more stress is placed upon the larynx when speaking or singing.

An auditory vacation

Did you know that music can be an excellent stress reducer? Tension is an enemy of easy, healthful vocalization.

Consider keeping a small music player in your school desk for moments when you need a lift. Small digital players can hold three or four melodies and cost as little as $30-40.

Many advocate classical music (especially Mozart) as a stress-buster, but experiment with spiritual, country, jazz, blues or rock and roll.

Nature sounds (such as rainfall or the ocean) may also lift you.

Food for thought

Off-duty voice demands Research shows that even though teachers work about seven hours a day, they actually talk only about one cumulative hour on the job. Is 1 of 24 hours in a day too much talking?

Consider: what do you do when you're not teaching? Sit at home and say nothing? Probably not. The same type of person who is attracted to the teaching profession (outgoing, helpful, comforting, social) is also drawn to activities that may be vocally demanding. Whether you use your voice on the job or off, it's still the same voice.

And then there are the compulsive talkers. Some people use speech as an outlet for emotional overload: anxiety, unhappiness, anger, giddiness. Some individuals seem to feel obligated to fill silences with ummms, ok's, sure's, or similar phrases. They literally talk away the day. All the added speaking can make your daily word count skyrocket.