What Is the Nature and also the Cause of Spasmodic Dysphonia? Case Studies:

Is Spasmodic Dysphonia always the cause of a spasming and/ or generally-malfunctioning voice, or could it be just multiple - and very nasty - symptoms induced by the injury(s) occurred within the vocal anatomy?

Over many years, I have been tending to numerous of people with the diagnosis of Spasmodic Dysphonia (SD). I would like (down the road) to present to you (my reader) several cases with different causes, treatments and outcomes after all of the above:

About the latest case of Tanya G, you already know in general that Tanya came to us to Toronto, Canada all the way from New Zealand in hopes of the complete recovery of her voice from her Abductor SD.

Let’s examine what the very specific instruction and treatment process actually entailed and whether or not it was possible to achieve a complete cure of a generally-incurable voice disorder within only 50 hours of instruction and treatment.

In a nutshell, below is Tanya’s story:

Tanya told me that before such occurrence, she was a very loud and flamboyant person. She also told me that she used to teach fitness classes (up to 7 classes a week) which, after her vocal injury, she had to downsize her workload to only 2 classes a week.

Her voice (according to Tanya) started gradually subsiding; but naturally, she could not agree with that and continued using her voice like before - and even in a more intensive manner, pushing it and pulling it to the max until it “snapped”.

Within 3 years of the first signs of damaged voice, her voice began spasming uncontrollably and her vocal cords were not coming back together in sync, as if they were hitting some obstruction on the right side of her vocal anatomy.

During our sessions, I did not at all think that the nature of her vocal injury is neurological or neurologically induced. Now thinking about her case thoroughly, I came to the conclusion that there were symptoms of hit-and-missed signals between her brain and her injured larynx which, in turn, was producing a disturbing sound; actually suggesting some neurological damage to the nerve endings. However, I still would qualify her case induced by mechanical damage due to overuse and misuse her voice prior to her injury. In other words, her voice was somewhat sounding as if it had a neurological nature to start with; but those neurologically-induced symptoms, in my opinion, were a consequence of the physical/mechanical damage - and definitely not otherwise.

Once I combined my instruction with the special body movements, which were commanding Tanya’s brain to give a proper signal to her vocal anatomy (vocal folds and larynx), we were able to achieve a completely clear and clean sound.

The above, as far as I am concerned, absolutely (and nonetheless, against all odds) proves my point.

The above manipulations between the brain employed motor skills and the voice as an outcome, suggested that numerous repetition of the latter would eventually condition Tanya’s brain to give the proper and balanced command to her physical body and thus her voice as well - as an outcome of the above described.

20 years ago, our prominent Toronto newspaper, “The Toronto Star”, once said that the Vocal Science method - whereas the technique of which is a holistic approach to voice mechanics and to the person as a whole - is definitely “not for the faint of heart”.

The Vocal Science™ method requires total fitness as well as coordination and synergy between mental, physical, emotional and vocal components. The person in question needs to understand the concept and nature of the treatment from the physical point of view, as well as from the kinaesthetic side of things - and then make a substantial effort to retain both variables.

In this instance, the natural herbal treatment is also advocated - as those potent remedies also play an essential role in ones’ healing. We are talking about healing of the disturbed vocal anatomy, as well as the physical body an emotional aspects of such matter.

So as you see, my reader, it is a very complex and highly-intense situation, but it works - and thus, given a sufficient amount of time, the patient (against all odds) could even opt for a total recovery on every level.

Tanya just texted us that she safely arrived back to New Zealand. This woman is a real trooper and the real McCoy! We know that the best is yet to come for her and we want to see her reaching her original state of happiness and prosperity forward!

In the next series of blogs on the same topic, we will profile quite a few more cases of SD of different kinds and different outcomes.

Stay tuned!