Our vocal apparatus performs an important communicative function: thanks to our voice, we communicate with others, convey important information to them, and some people associate the ability to speak or sing with their professional activities.
The state when the voice goes down or disappears cannot be called pleasant or comfortable. The problem of the missing voice is especially acute for those who have chosen the so-called speech profession: teachers, singers, announcers, etc.: along with the missing voice comes temporary disability. Therefore, a person’s desire to urgently restore his vocal cords is quite logical.
In medicine, a condition where the voice is lost or diminished is called aphonia.
There are many reasons for aphonia, and they are not always associated with a cold, as is commonly believed. Accordingly, approaches to treating a dry voice also differ.
Why does the voice shrink? What are the causes of hoarse vocal cords? What quickly restores a dry voice? How to urgently restore the ability to fully speak or sing? Quick voice restoration is the topic of our new article.
How does our vocal apparatus work?
Before we deal with the reasons why our voice disappears or shrinks, we need to understand how our vocal apparatus works. The air leaving the lungs as you exhale encounters certain obstacles on its way and collides with them, thereby leading to the emergence of sound vibrations. If nothing interfered with the air, sounds would not be formed, which means we would not be able to speak.
Such a natural obstacle to air flow is the larynx, or rather the vocal cords located on it. The vocal cords are folds in the lining of the larynx. There is a gap between them. When a person is silent, the gap is wide open. It narrows when talking or singing. The air passing through the ligaments causes them to rapidly oscillate and vibrate. This is how a sound wave arises and a voice is born. It is quite logical that if the voice disappears or shrinks, then the problem is related to the vocal cords and a malfunction of the vocal apparatus.
How can an elderly person regain strength after a long illness?
Loss of strength after illness in older people is often accompanied by bad mood, grumpiness, and sleep disturbances. This can be the onset of depression, which must be dealt with immediately.
Below we will talk about the main available methods for restoring strength.
Establish nutrition
After illness, nutrition plays a critical role in recovery. Try to make it more balanced. There is no need to completely limit yourself; food should be enjoyable, which is especially important during the recovery period.
Some diseases may be associated with exhaustion of the body, emaciation, so it is necessary to organize nutrition and increase portion sizes gradually. Healthy foods will help replenish the amount of protein that is responsible for immunity.
Be sure to include lean meat, vegetable broths, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables in your diet. Limit the consumption of stimulating drinks, salt, sugar, and unnatural foods, as they only increase the load on the body.
Maintain drinking regime
After an illness, the body, especially the elderly, needs a lot of fluid. Drinking water will remove harmful products from the body that were formed during illness. To improve immunity, you can also drink decoctions of various herbs, freshly prepared compotes, jelly, teas with lemon, milk or honey, freshly squeezed juices or your favorite fruits, vegetables and berries.
Regular good sleep
The body recovers during sleep, so it is recommended that a person get full sleep during and after illness. During sleep, the body's defenses are activated.
Sleep will also help improve your overall condition and improve your mood, as a night's rest restores and strengthens the nervous system.
Water treatments
Water can help in recovery not only from the inside, but also through external influences. It washes away the remaining waste and toxins from the body, cleanses pores, improves blood circulation, and also relieves tension and relaxes.
A contrast shower has a beneficial effect. Elderly people should approach the procedure with caution. Do not immediately set the shower to a low temperature. Start with your feet and increase the area of impact. You should not immediately start with douches, as this may provoke a relapse of the disease.
Start doing exercises
Even older people should definitely do physical exercise, which should be approached consciously. Consult your doctor before starting exercise, as the aging body is quite fragile, so the complex will include special physical exercises that take into account your characteristics.
It’s enough just to start every morning with basic exercises to warm up your joints and muscles, and the recovery process will begin to proceed faster.
Walks
Stay outdoors more often. After your morning exercises, go for a walk in the park or just to the store. Your body will be saturated with oxygen, which will become a catalyst for replenishment. If there is a forest near your house, then breathe in the healthy smell of coniferous trees. Walking is also physical activity, which, as mentioned above, will have a positive effect on the condition of the body.
Positive attitude
A negative mood will not help in the fight against the disease. Therefore, older people are recommended to spend time with pleasure, play with their grandchildren, and watch their favorite films on TV. The support of relatives and loved ones will play a huge role in recovery. This is especially important for older people.
Why does my voice disappear and go silent?
Most people associate the condition when the voice disappears and decreases exclusively with a cold. But only a fraction of diagnosed cases are associated with colds. In reality, there are many more reasons why the ability to speak normally is lost, and they are not always associated with infection or ENT diseases.
Let's figure out why the voice shrinks or disappears. It is very important to correctly determine the cause of the malfunction of the vocal cords. This directly determines how you will need to recover.
- Infectious diseases.
- Overstrain of the vocal cords.
- Neoplasms.
- Problems with the thyroid gland.
- Nervous stress.
- Allergy.
- Bad habits.
Most often, the ligaments shrink due to inflammation of the mucous membrane of the larynx - laryngitis. With laryngitis, the ligaments swell and lose their ability to vibrate quickly. Aphonia can also be triggered by a cold, pharyngitis, sore throat, tracheitis and other inflammatory processes in the laryngopharynx. When the ability to speak fully is lost due to infection, the patient usually also complains of a sore throat. The “culprits” of the malfunction of the ligaments in these cases are viruses, bacteria and fungi.
Very often the voice shrinks and disappears due to increased load on the ligaments. This problem is often faced by representatives of speech professions, for whom the vocal cords are a full-fledged working instrument. Such professions include singers, teachers, announcers, tour guides, call center operators, and sales managers. Their ability to speak is lost due to overstrain of the ligaments, which inevitably leads to aphonia. For such patients, quickly restoring the functioning of the vocal apparatus is a priority! But don’t think that only professionals have a voice that shrinks and disappears. It’s enough to have a good time at karaoke with friends or scream a lot at the concert of your favorite performer, and in the morning you are guaranteed to feel what it’s like to have shrunken vocal cords.
Sometimes the ability to speak normally disappears, seemingly for no apparent reason: there is no cold, the vocal apparatus has not been overstrained, or has not sat down from shouting or a long conversation. In order to quickly restore your voice in this case, you need to urgently consult an otolaryngologist. Quite often, aphonia is a consequence of the appearance of laryngeal tumors. The ability to speak loudly, by the way, disappears not only with tumors of the larynx, but also with neoplasms of the thyroid gland or lung area. And how quickly you visit an ENT doctor and how urgently you diagnose the problem depends on how quickly you recover!
Friends! Timely and correct treatment will ensure you a speedy recovery!
Diseases of the thyroid gland can provoke the appearance of chronic laryngitis. This condition must be treated urgently and quickly. Moreover, restoration of the vocal apparatus must begin with treatment of the underlying disease. High-quality and quick treatment of diseases of the endocrine system will restore the sonority of speech.
How often do we hear the phrase: “All problems come from nerves.” And there is undoubtedly some truth here. If a person spends a long time in conditions of constant stress, peace disappears, full sleep disappears, if he has to constantly experience nervous overstrain, then the body can react to this with the appearance of aphonia. The only way out in this situation is to urgently restore mental balance and calm the nervous system. In this case, you need to recover not only with the help of an ENT doctor, but also with the help of a good neurologist or psychologist.
The larynx is quite susceptible to irritants. Upon contact with allergens, swelling of the larynx occurs, which leads to the ligaments shrinking and the ability to speak loudly and sonorously is lost. To urgently restore the previous healthy state of the larynx, it is necessary to eliminate contact with the allergen and urgently consult an allergist.
Smoking is a very common cause of aphonia. All harmful substances that are part of a cigarette have a detrimental effect on the larynx. How to recover in this case? There is no magic pill. A person simply sits down, thinks carefully about his condition and urgently makes the only right decision - not to smoke anymore! A lot of patients subsequently leave their reviews: “I restored my vocal cords as soon as I quit smoking.” All in your hands!
As we can see, there are many reasons why ligaments shrink. To recover quickly, you must urgently consult a doctor to determine the cause of aphonia.
An ENT doctor is responsible for quickly restoring the functioning of the vocal apparatus. Sometimes doctors of related specialties join him.
How to quickly restore your voice using folk remedies
The consequence of a cold, hypothermia, or overstrain of the vocal cords is often loss of voice.
There are also professions that involve heavy stress on the vocal cords. In addition to artists and singers, these include teachers, speakers, leaders and people who have to talk a lot. Due to overstrain of the vocal cords, cases of voice loss are not uncommon.
What to do? After all, there are cases when it is necessary to restore your voice very quickly (speech, important meeting, etc.) without harm to health.
Folk remedies for voice restoration will help you with this .
1. Heat 125 ml of milk and add 125 ml of alkaline mineral water. Drink in small sips throughout the day.
2. Heat 500 ml of milk, stir 1 chicken egg + 5 g of butter + 5 g of natural honey in it. Drink before breakfast and dinner.
3. Marshmallow tea. Pour 10 g of dry or 15 g of fresh marshmallow flowers into 250 ml of very hot water, let it brew a little, and add 5-10 g of honey. Drink in small sips every hour throughout the day.
4. Heat 50 ml of cognac in a water bath, then add 15 g of honey and 3 drops of lemon juice. Drink 2 r. per day.
5. Eat 1 tsp. natural honey every 2 hours. It is an effective means of restoring the voice after injury or due to smoke and fumes.
6. Pour 250 ml of cool water into a metal bowl. After the water boils, add 125 g of aniseed fruit. After 15 min. You can throw out the fruits and add 65 g of honey and cook for a couple more minutes. Pour 20 ml of cognac into the prepared broth. Drink 20 ml every 30 minutes.
For this recipe, it is recommended to use linden honey.
How to recover from a dry voice? Treatment methods
Competent treatment tactics largely depend on the cause of aphonia. If aphonia occurs against the background of infectious diseases, the ENT doctor will prescribe antibacterial or antiviral drugs, anti-inflammatory and antiseptic agents; will prescribe gargles, inhalations, and physiotherapeutic procedures.
If the problem arose as a result of a long conversation, shouting, or due to the costs of the profession, a phoniatrist will help you recover. He will offer an effective treatment regimen and show you a number of exercises, the implementation of which will help you avoid similar problems in the future. Very often, professional singers resort to the services of a phoniatrist to recover. But a consultation would not be superfluous for those employees who are forced to talk for a long time and a lot in the course of their activities.
In other cases, you may need to consult related specialists - an endocrinologist, neurologist, oncologist, etc.
Regardless of what caused the aphonia, there are a number of general recommendations that must be followed in order to recover quickly:
- Have a day of silence when you speak to a minimum;
- don't whisper;
- drink more warm liquids (teas, compotes, fruit drinks);
- humidify the indoor air;
- adjust your diet: no hard, spicy or hot foods, carbonated drinks, alcoholic drinks and coffee;
- give up bad habits.
Aphonia requires mandatory treatment! Therefore, do not delay your visit to the otolaryngologist.
