A Voice Apart

In our roster, we have more and more people coming to us for voice repair and voice restoration , but they are also coming to actually “find” their voice. We have clients who come to us with various voice/vocal issues and who have already tried everything else, especially through the means of the Internet. Some of those people are very "computer savvy" and are able to deeply surf and navigate voice-related sites. Evidently, they have been trying to save money, so they would not have to travel anywhere to rectify their voice problems and, instead, were trying to do it on their own and from the comfort of their home. Needless to say that eventually, accomplishing nothing to what they were looking for, they actually managed to make their voice/vocal issues even more pronounced and, in some cases. completely  non-repairable (at least with a non-surgical approach) ... I really like one of the commercials for men’s weight loss (that is running very often

Lately, I have been attending to more and more voice disorders of all types and kinds. Majority of them have had similar symptoms, but, needless to say, not necessarily the similar causes. The symptoms usually consist of hoarseness, sore throat, pain while talking and/or singing, burning vocal cords (usually from excess of gastric acid, which shoots directly up the throat, especially if the voice is positioned quite low in the vocal box). Those nasty symptoms make a person quite miserable and depressed. It does interfere with their careers, even when they are not necessarily singers. They often are asked if they have a cold, or what is wrong with them or their voices in particular. Some male voices turn soprano’ish and those males often mistaken for females. It is quite disheartening for all the people who experience some kind of voice disorders, as their lives, in one way or another, have been disrupted. Strangely enough, though some of them are looking for a magic

Needless to say that, on a regular basis, I have been getting phone calls and e-mails concerning  voice/vocal problems from speakers and singers. To almost all of them, the doctors had prescribed certain medications to conquer their acid reflux (needless to say that, not in every case, the above diagnosis was correct). Practically all doctors (specialists or not) prescribed to people with voice/vocal problems, a vocal rest. "Vocal rest?" you may exclaim! - If so, how useful could it be? In fact, in the majority of cases, it is; as after all, if you break your leg, you should not be hopping on it and running marathons. However, the patient with the broken leg (at the very least) is offered a cast, or corrective surgery first... and then the cast. The ENT doctors evidently think that if the person would stop singing, or even speaking, the problems will correct themselves. And granted, sometimes since the pressure from the vocal box is removed due to the extensive,