We’ve all been there: you wake up one morning, the sun is shining; you open your mouth to greet the world and out comes a glorious… croak? Losing your voice is a pretty common predicament – but what’s going on, physiologically, to cause your sudden silence? And should you ever be worried about it?
Where do our voices “go” when we lose them?
Medically speaking, losing your voice is known as laryngitis – an inflammation of your larynx, or voice box. And to understand why it causes your normally dulcet tones to turn raspy and hushed, it helps to have a good picture of what’s going on physically inside your throat.
“Inside the larynx are your vocal cords – two folds of mucous membrane covering muscle and cartilage,” explains Mayo Clinic. “Normally, your vocal cords open and close smoothly, forming sounds through their movement and vibration.”
You can think of it as similar to playing a trumpet: the musician opens their mouth to take a breath, then presses their lips together and vibrates them against one another in the mouthpiece to produce a sound. That’s exactly what the vocal cords are doing: opening to allow air in, then forcing it out again as they vibrate against one another.
Got it? Okay, now imagine that trumpeter got stung in the mouth by a bee. “With laryngitis, your vocal cords become inflamed or irritated,” Mayo Clinic explains. “This makes the vocal cords swell, which distorts the sounds produced by air passing over them.”
“As a result, your voice sounds hoarse,” it continues. “In some cases of laryngitis, your voice can become almost undetectable.”
What can cause us to lose our voice?
Although it can often be the most annoying symptom – sometimes even the only symptom – you experience, losing your voice isn’t actually a condition in its own right.
Rather, it’s a sign that something else is going wrong – usually a fairly minor viral infection like a standard seasonal cold. More serious causes might be the flu or a bout of COVID; other non-viral culprits might be your allergies, which can cause your vocal cords to swell just like an illness can (ironically, the treatment for those allergies, antihistamines, can dry out your throat, also resulting in a hoarse voice.)
But while losing your voice is often caused by an illness, sometimes something more practical and obvious is to blame.
“Just as you can injure your knee or elbow when playing football, you can injure your vocal folds when talking or singing,” Bharat Panuganti. a laryngeal surgeon and assistant professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Otolaryngology, told UAB News last year. “Injury to the folds can be a cause of losing your voice, but the timing of the lost voice could be an indicator to the cause.”
In other words, “if you go to a concert and scream for three hours, the next morning you may wake up without a voice,” he explained. “The reason for this instant loss of voice could be an injury such as the swelling of the folds or even a bleed of the blood vessels in the folds.”
In all of these cases, you should get your voice back within a week or two – but there are some more worrying causes that can hang around for longer. If you find your raspy timbre isn’t going away, or is coming back way more often than most people experience, you should seek medical advice – it could be a sign of something more serious such as rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid problems, or even cancer.
“If you’re losing your voice regularly or if your voice doesn’t return to normal after a few weeks, it’s time to consult a laryngologist,” advised Yin Yiu, an ear, nose and throat doctor specializing in laryngology at Houston Methodist, in 2020. “He or she can investigate whether it’s a sign of a larger, more serious medical issue.”
“Frequent voice loss usually indicates an underlying vocal cord abnormality,” he warned. “So, the concern is to determine why you’re losing your voice so frequently.”
How to get your lost voice back
Unfortunately for anybody wanting a quick fix, getting your voice back is usually a case of simply waiting it out. Quietly.
“The best thing you can do if you’ve lost your voice is to give it a rest,” Yiu advised. “Your vocal cords contact each other every time you speak, so limiting speaking also limits the chance of further aggravating the vocal cords.”
And when we say “give it a rest”, we mean full silence – at least as much as possible. Despite what you may have heard, whispering isn’t a sneaky workaround that will allow you to carry on talking while simultaneously resting your vocal cords.
“When you talk, your vocal folds vibrate against each other to produce sound, and the frequency could happen 100 to 300 times per second,” Panuganti said. “The frequency depends on the pitch of your voice, not necessarily the volume with which you are voicing.”
In other words, he explained, “this vibration will happen whether you are talking softly or loudly. So when we advise voice rest, it means to rest the use of your vocal folds, which includes whispering.”
That said, there are a few things you can do to make that medically enforced quiet time pass more comfortably. Make sure you stay hydrated – your vocal cords need to be wet to work, so letting them get dry will just aggravate them more – and use a humidifier. In a similar vein, try to avoid obvious irritants such as perfumes or cigarette smoke (side note: smokers are about three times as likely to have a voice disorder than people who never smoke, per WebMD.)
Using over-the-counter decongestants can help too, as they can thin any mucus in your throat – too much of that, and your vocal folds can get coated to the point of not being able to produce normal vibrations. And, of course, painkillers such as acetaminophen can help with any discomfort in your throat.
As for your memaw’s patented miracle tea, however – we’re afraid that one is probably just wishful thinking. “There is a lot of information on the internet about teas and hydration curing voice loss,” Panuganti said. “While this is good for overall throat hygiene, which could not hurt, it may not help to recover your voice faster.”
Source Link: Why We Lose Our Voice, And How To Get It Back