8 Essentials of Vocal Health
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Having a healthy voice isn’t just important for singers and professional voice users, it’s important for everyone! If you’ve ever had issues with your voice, you’ll have an idea of how much of an impact it can have on your daily life, your work, your ability to communicate to express yourself clearly, and even on your sense of identity.
As Erasmus told the world way back in the 1500s (and people with common sense have known ever since), prevention is better than cure. So here are some of the ways to look after your voice day to day, to keep it in great condition and serving you well.
1. Warm up and cool down
Both warm ups and cool downs have psychological benefits but their physical benefits can help to prevent vocal injury. Just like any form of physical exercise, prolonged or heavy voice use needs preparation - and for more info on the what, how and why of that, you can read my blog post about warming up. And a cooldown at the end of a practice or performance helps to reset the vocal folds to a comfortable neutral again.
2. Watch your effort levels
I’m certainly guilty of overdoing it sometimes: the music’s on, the mood’s right, in my head I’m headlining at Wembley… and the next day I realise I should’ve taken it easier. All vocal tasks involve muscle work - muscle effort - but the trick is to learn to tune in to exactly where the muscle effort is happening (singing is a whole body activity after all) and how much you actually need. If you can experiment with using less, you might be surprised at some of the sounds you’re capable of making, and your voice will thank you for it! A good teacher can help you with this.
3. Sleep
There isn’t enough space here to detail just how magical sleep is for our health (I’d urge you to read Matthew Walker instead) but suffice to say sleep is vital for a healthy, well-functioning voice. While we sleep, the vocal folds are repairing themselves from their daily hundreds of thousands of collisions with each other and replenishing their cells. And the improvement in brain function after a good night’s sleep has a positive knock-on effect on our mood and emotional regulation, which impacts the voice hugely.
4. Drink enough fluids
I go on about hydration ALL. THE. TIME. So how much is enough? It’s a very individual thing, depending on your physiology, your activity levels, your voice use, your lifestyle, your diet… and on top of all that the amount you need can vary from day to day.
Experiment to find the right amount for you - but a good guide is that you should ‘pee pale’. If your urine is pale in colour, you’re probably hydrated enough. Our bodies have a really good system for getting rid of any excess.
Remember you still get hydration from food and other drinks too, not just water. But don’t discount the benefit of carrying a bottle of water with you throughout the day. If you struggle with drinking enough, you can even get an app to remind you such as Water Reminder.
5. Vocal rest throughout the day
Your voice needs rest as much as it likes to be used - make sure you factor that into your day. Frequent, short vocal breaks are ideal, but if you have a particularly heavy vocal load, or your voice feels tired, it’s even more important to factor in time for vocal rest.
When you rest, the vocal folds, and the muscles that help to support their work, have a chance to relax, and their cells get restored and replenished. And provided you’ve been drinking enough to be systemically hydrated (I told you I bang on about it all the time), when you rest the vocal folds have a chance to rehydrate too.
And if you’re still DESPERATE to practice and don’t want to switch off totally, remember silent practice has been proven to be really effective. More on that in my other blog post on silent practice - but you do what it says on the tin: practice silently, in your mind…
6. Avoid throat clearing
This is the easiest thing to say and so often the trickiest thing to do. A little cough can sometimes be irresistible. But habitual throat clearing can become a real problem.
You need to be able to cough to clear anything that might be going into the airway that shouldn’t be heading that way - it’s a crucial biological function for survival. But we can also get the sensation that we need to cough when there isn’t anything harmful there, like when a little bit of the mucus that coats the vocal folds is tickling. When we habitually throat clear, the vocal folds collide with each other forcefully and repeatedly, which can cause inflammation, which then makes them more vulnerable to damage.
One way to alleviate that urge is to drink a sip of water, and when you swallow it, the swallowing action presses the folds together and redistributes the mucus somewhat.
7. Get a voice teacher
Voice lessons with a good voice teacher who has training in vocal health, can teach you healthy ways to speak and sing. Many of the voice qualities we hear in the music we listen to and in the media we consume are high-impact sounds (like belting, or opera, or shouting) and they are perfectly safe to create if we know how to mitigate the risks that come with them. Find a knowledgeable teacher that you trust to show you how.
8. Seek help when you need it
Most importantly, when things go awry (and they will, because we’re human, and however careful we are, we are all susceptible to injury and illness), seek help. When your voice feels hoarse, different in any way or if you just know it isn’t right, if your voice teacher is a Vocal Health First Aider they should be able to provide some advice in the first instance and direct you to the right person for an assessment and any treatment and support needed, whether that is your GP, or a specialist voice clinic.
Singing teachers are NOT qualified to treat or diagnose vocal health issues. But singing teachers who have a vocal health qualification like the Vocal Health First Aid certificate know the scope of their practice and will be able to point you in the right direction when things go wrong.
And that’s it - I hope you find the list of these basics helpful, and that you can keep them in mind as a starting point in maintaining a healthy voice.
Please do get in touch with any questions - I have my VHFA qualification and as an EMT I am able to guide you in developing healthy ways to speak or sing with regular singing lessons!
Happy, healthy singing,
Laura x
