Vocal Care Series: Part 2

Blog Series: 
Vocal Care and Hygiene for Professors and Teachers

# 2: HYDRATION

Being dehydrated can negatively impact your vocal folds and put them at risk for damage. Overtime this can contribute to poor vocal quality and frequent loss of your voice. Drinking plenty of water and non-caffinated drinks everyday is an easy preventative measure. Give your voice some TLC! It works hard for you. 

Vocal Care Series: Part 1

Blog Series: 
Vocal Care and Hygiene for Professors and Teachers

# 1: VOCAL REST

If you are in a profession that requires regular use of your voice, you may be at risk for damaging your vocal folds.You might start to lose your voice. It may pain you by the end of the day. It may occasionally become gravely or hoarse in quality. The results could impact your ability to do your job and you might even eventually need intervention from ENTs and/or speech-language pathologists.

The best therapy for voice problems originating in overuse or abuse is to prevent the problems in the first place. Without further ado, here begins a series of advice from on vocal care from a speech-language pathologist:

My first bit of advice is... vocal rest.

Simple enough concept, but sometimes difficult to follow through on. If you are in education, chances are you love to engage in a lively conversation. You are also frequently asked questions or sought out for mentoring.

Regardless, in between classes or meetings make sure you set aside time when you don't use your voice. Any extracurricular voice use should also be watched for. For example, try to resist yelling at sports games. If you like to sing, keep it to a minimum on days you are also teaching or at meetings.

Take care of your voice! It is an important part of you and your career.

The semester has started...

While I adore the wonderful start to my academic blog, the beginning of the semester is going to slow me down for a while.