Many adults have difficulties or disorders with their voice. Voice problems (dysphonia) can occur for a variety of reasons:

• Misuse of voice
• Stress can lead to voice difficulties
• Injury or illness affecting any part of the vocal apparatus
• Disease and illness of the larynx and/or laryngectomy

Problems with voice can affect a person’s life in many ways including their career progression, relationships and confidence. Many things can be done with speech therapy and lifestyle changes that can have a positive impact on your voice.

Before we talk about what we can do to repair or facilitate voice, I think we need to look at how the voice works. Put simply, the voice is powered by air from the lungs, the air passes through the larynx which contains the vocal folds (often called the vocal chords). The vocal folds are 2 folds of muscle that meet together many times per second (approximately 125 per second for men and 210 times for woman) when we want to produce voice.

The meeting together of the vocal folds creates the voice which resonates in the pharynx, oral and nasal cavities, and is then shaped into words by the speech apparatus, the tongue, lips, facial muscles etc.  Pitch is changed by altering the mass, length and tension of the vocal folds e.g. if you make an “eeee” sound and then an “aaaa” sound, this is air passing through your vocal folds at different tensions and lengths (with your tongue also helping to shape the sound).  The sound made in the larynx will travel into the oral cavity and your tongue, cheeks and lips will assume particular positions to articulate the sounds correctly.  When we make voiceless sounds (”s”, “f” etc) our vocal folds are apart (abducted), and when we make voiced sounds (”a”, “m” etc) our vocal folds come together (adducted).