Voice Therapy: A Safe Non-Surgical Way To Treat Your Vocal Abuse

The voice is perhaps one of the important functions of the human body, as it permits you to express your thoughts and opinions and communicate with others. A good voice comes from two major components which are healthy vocal folds and healthy voice use. It is very common for a professional voice user or a singer to have vocal complaints. In these cases, there is a chance that the technique or usage of the voice causes this problem. Voice therapy is geared towards this part of the problem.

What is Voice therapy?

It is the practice of treating your voice in a non-surgical way by emphasizing the healthy voice use. A highly effective method to treat your voice without any need of surgery, this therapy is also effective in optimizing the surgical outcome by minimizing strain on the vocal cords. The therapy utilizing highly individualized exercises and techniques that help you to:

• Optimize the voice

• Eliminate the harmful vocal use

• Strengthen your vocal folds

• Assist in pre-operative and post-operative voice use

• Adjust your lifestyle and behaviors that cause vocal abuse

• Educate you about good vocal use

Why should one have this therapy?

Vocal therapy is a safe and very effective alternative to voice surgery because it teaches those with voice disorders beneficial voice habits, guarantees a strong voice for a longer period of time, as well as also reduces the risk of your voice disorders in the future.

An effective way to treat all types of voice disorders, this therapy may be insufficient in the diagnosis of a polyp or cyst. In these situations, Vocal Cord Surgery may be necessary. However, it should never be the only treatment, voice therapy is also necessary to ensure optimal outcomes. The purpose of voice therapy is not only to provide therapeutic techniques to cure a voice disorder but to also uplift beneficial voice habits to ensure a healthy voice.

Who provides voice therapy?

This therapy is a highly specialized form of general speech therapy and is performed by a licensed and certified speech-language pathologist. These pathologists undergo specialized training to become voice therapists, ensuring they are skilled in the treatment of the injured voice with therapy. This specialized therapy helps you in different ways like:

• Vocal rehabilitation

• Training for proper vocal hygiene

• Optimal pitch training

• Trans-gendered voice

• Therapy for high-endurance voice

• Therapy for pre-operative patients, to improve surgical outcomes

• Therapy for post-operative patients, to optimize wound healing

Treat Your Vocal Cord Dysfunction With Specialized Breathing Exercises

Vocal cord dysfunction means that your vocal cords are not working normally. With VCD, instead of your vocal cords opening up while you breathe in and out, your vocal cords close. A combining approach with a physician, a voice specialist, speech therapist and a psychiatrist, if needed, is usually effective to meet these problems head-on.

Common signs and symptoms of VCD: Most of the patients with Vocal Cord Dysfunction have relatively mild symptoms, although some of the patients may have severe symptoms.

• Noisy breathing (wheezing or raspy sound)

• Hoarse voice

• Feeling short of breath

• Tightness in the throat or chest.

• A frequent cough or clearing your throat.

• A feeling of choking or suffocation

Treatment of Vocal cord dysfunction:

VCD is different than any other breathing problems, as medications are not the only treatment for it. The mainstay of treating such dysfunction involves teaching patients the vocal cord techniques and breathing exercises by a voice specialist who holds immense experience in it. The techniques you’ll learn help you to improve your ability to relax to your throat muscles. While this therapy, you have to meet with a therapist, at least, three to four times to learn these techniques. Moreover, you will need to practice these exercises even when you are not having VCD, so you can control the symptoms before they take a severe form. Besides, if your voice problem is triggered by asthma or acid reflux (GERD), it is important to talk to your healthcare provider to get control of these problems.

Based in Ontario, Canada, The Royans Institute for Non-surgical Voice Repair employs specially designed speech exercises with trained voice specialists/speech therapists who teach you the right voice techniques and breathing exercises to protect and save your voice for life.

Follow these ways to fix your raspy or harsh voice

Hoarseness is the term given to an abnormal change in your voice pitch and its quality. A hoarse voice can sound lower on the pitch and volume, ranging from a deep, harsh voice to a weak, raspy voice or uneven quality. The hoarseness can be caused by several conditions like laryngitis, which occurs when your voice becomes inflamed due to overuse or a virus. Other causes may include the development of your vocal cords, neurological conditions such as Parkinson, or physical conditions such as acid reflux or a vocal cord hemorrhage (ruptured vocal cord(s). As per the nature of the cause, the treatment of hoarseness also varies.

Give your voice a rest

Overusing your voice is one of the main reasons of hoarseness. Taking a break from speaking or singing can, in turn, give rest to your vocal cords thus healing your voice restoring the full power your vocal cords can generate. Don’t whisper, as it also causes strain to your voice. Apart from this, if you do a lot of public speaking, always use a microphone to amplify your voice without an extra effort on your part. Warming up before giving a speech, singing, loud-volume talkative social events (such as cheering for your favorite sports team) can also be some other causes of your hoarseness. Enunciating vowel sounds on a sliding pitch scale and thrilling your lips can make your voice prepared for heavy vocal use.

Hydrate your throat, regularly

Keeping your throat moist as much as possible can help alleviate and, in most cases, fix different degrees of a raspy voice. Drinking at least 6-8 glasses of water on a daily basis ensure that tissues in your throat are always hydrated. Hoarseness is more possible to occur when your throat is dry. Consuming alcohol, nicotine smoke and caffeine can also increase your hoarse voice. So when you’re not using these substances, it can also help you to get rid of hoarseness. In addition, if you suffer from GERD and notice a change in your voice, eliminate or limit the amount of spicy (or any acidic) foods in order to help your get voice back.

Medical or Alternative Intervention

Severe cases of hoarseness caused by chronic inflammation of your throat tissues or polyps on the vocal cords/in the walls of the throat, may require medical intervention like medical surgery; but only used as a last resort. With that said, there are many other alternatives (with regards to curing vocal cord hoarseness and inflammation) that can be done non-surgically. These voice problems are best managed by professionals who know better how the voice functions. They are known as non-surgical voice repair specialists. Alternative Voice Therapy (non-surgical voice repair) has been known as one of the best solutions for hoarseness and for those who do not want to undergo medical surgery. Depending on the cause of your voice problem, these specialists will teach you several exercises and use natural herbal remedies to fix your voice problems non-surgically.

Get The Proper Non-Surgical Treatment For Laryngitis

Laryngitis is mainly an inflammation of the voice box that causes your voice to become raspy or hoarse. There is often a time when your voice sounds raspy, be deeper than normal and or break (crack) now and then. There is also a chance that you can lose your voice completely for a full day (or more). Other symptoms may be a dry or a sore throat, coughing and have trouble swallowing. The most common cause for this laryngitis can be the colds or the flu. Acid reflux that is also known as GERD; overuse or misuse of the voice such as cheering at a sports event can also cause this problem.

If all these symptoms have been present only for a few days or occur immediately after misuse or overuse of the voice, then the primary treatment is to give rest to your voice as much as possible. Moreover, it is also imperative to over-hydrate the body by drinking a lot of liquids. But, if the affected person has symptoms that suggest that a virus is present such as low-grade fever, nasal congestion, muscle aches, then you should be sure to drink a lot of non-alcoholic fluids and take some generic medicines for the symptoms.

Laryngitis mainly affects your vocal cords and voice box and the doctors will often start treatment for this with a visual diagnosis. They make use of a special mirror to view your vocal cords, or they’ll perform a laryngoscopy to magnify the vocal cords for easy viewing. During this diagnose, if the doctor notices a lesion or any other doubtful mass, they may order a biopsy to rule out that throat cancer. During a biopsy, the doctor will remove out a small piece of tissue so it can be examined in a lab.

In the past, surgery was the only treatment for this laryngitis. However, the surgeries to remove these tissues often had bad outcomes. On their acute stage, the rest of the voice is the best treatment. However, if the trauma occurs repeatedly, voice therapy is the best choice for the treatment of this vocal problem. This non-surgical treatment mainly includes some physical exercises of your vocal cords coupled with some behavioral changes. Moreover, this therapy is also complimented with the use of natural herbal remedies that work as a supplement to lubricate, heal and strengthen your voice box. So, be on the safe side by getting non-surgical treatment (voice repair) at the right time and prevent the complications of a surgery treatment.