VOICE

Our voices make us unique. The voice shows how we are feeling, if we are stressed, happy, angry or sad. The functioning and sound of the voice is highly dependent on how the vocal cords look and do their job. Voice problems can mean hoarseness, a lump or pain in your throat, not being able to speak for a longer period or having difficulties controlling the pitch, loudness, or quality of your voice.

As you exhale, air gently passes through your throat, across your open vocal cords, and out your mouth and nose. When you speak, your vocal cords close partially as air travels through them, causing vibrations and the unique sound of your voice. Your voice is the result of remarkable and complex interactions involving several body parts-especially the lungs, voice box (larynx), and mouth. Damage to any of these body parts, sickness or straining use of the voice can affect the functioning of the voice and lead to temporary or permanent damage to the vocal cords.

Your doctor can usually diagnose a voice problem using information from a medical history and by doing a physical exam. Other tests may be done to evaluate vocal cord vibration or to detect suspicious areas in your throat. 

After that, the speech and language pathologist can do an assessment by listening and analyzing how the voice sounds and investigate how the voice problems relate to every day demands on the voice, living habits and medical facts.

Treatment of voice problems implies training body awareness, breathing and vocal function. Parallel to this training, conversations about the different factors that can elicit or increase the problems are being held.