Sore Throat Tips

By Ginny Kopf

            As an actor, your livelihood depends on your voice, so take precious care of your instrument.  Your voice is a mirror—it is directly responsive to your overall health, the environmental elements, what you eat and drink, and how you use it every day.  It also responds to stress by sending you physical clues in the form of a sore throat or scratchy voice to warn you, “Please do something to stop the stress!”  But if you ignore these clues and continue abusing or misusing your voice, your body has cleverly learned how to defend itself by masking the problem.  You’ll carry around habitual tensions, and become desensitized to the pain, which can be dangerous.  So listen to your body!

            A lot of you are surrendering to consistent or recurring throat problems just because you don’t know that you CAN do something about it.  In the next few columns, I want to share some tips that may help you feel more in control of those nasty sore throats.

            Some of these tips are the advice of ear, nose and throat specialists (ENTs) or laryngologists) that I’ve worked with, or drawn from the many vocal conferences I’ve attended, or from journals and books studied through my doctoral work in vocal health.  Perhaps most valuable are the tips I’ve gleaned from the proven experiences of my students.  Over the past twenty five years I’ve coached thousands of actors and public speakers who must push their voices to the limit, day after day, like the performers at Disney and Universal Studios.  Some of the tips listed below may be Old Wives Tales that seem to have worked for “most of the people, most of the time.”  Perhaps they’ll work for you.

Causes of throat problems:

            Your sore throat could be caused by a cold, flu, bronchitis, strep, or other virus.  It could be caused by (or exacerbated by) allergies.  Allergies or “allergic reactions” are almost impossible to avoid in Florida.

Seems like everyone lately is told by their doctor that they have “reflux” (which, bluntly put means you are burping up stomach acids into your throat).  There is GERD (gastro-intestinal reflux), the heartburn type, felt in the chest, and also a laryngeal/pharyngeal reflux, felt more in the throat or bronchial tube.  Post-nasal drip is a common culprit, causing excess mucus. 

            Your sore throat could be the result of your own misuse or abuse.         “Misuse” is when you have poor vocal technique, like neck tension, chest breathing, or incorrect jaw or tongue placement when you speak.  A vocal coach like myself can help you recognize and relearn better techniques to eliminate the throat problems.  “Abuse” is when you have continued to push your voice, and push it incorrectly over a period of time, enough to cause some damage.  Depending on how long you’ve abused it, the damage may or may not be reversible.  Be aware that you may not feel soreness at all.  Vocal nodes, for example (calluses on your vocal chords)

do not “hurt” but rather cause a raspy voice.

            Above all, don’t ignore a throat problem.  When in any doubt about the seriousness of the situation, get help from a doctor.  Better safe than sorry.  I always refer my clients to medical doctors or speech therapists or ENTs (laryngologists) when we suspect the vocal problem goes beyond the realm of a simple sore throat.  Your family doctor can tell you if he or she suspects damage or a serious enough problem to refer you to an ENT.  You may need an allergist.  Many healthy actors who move to Florida struggle with allergies for the first year they are here. Often the problem diminishes the next year.  I have several tips for allergy sufferers in a later column.

When to seek professional help:

            (1)  If your voice is consistently raspy or hoarse and does not seem to be getting stronger after 5-10 days,

            (2)  if you think you’ve strained your voice and it does not recover after a day or two of resting it,

            (3)  if your sore throat keeps recurring,

            (4)  if you wake up with a sore throat every morning.

            Many professional actors and singers, particularly at the theme parks and attractions, have rough performing schedules at high pitches of energy and stress.  This is important:  if your voice is sore or raspy (remember, it needn’t be both to signal a problem) and it doesn’t recover by the next day after resting it, then you need to seek help.  Your regular speaking voice is what to listen to, because many vocally trained actors and singers can actually use their technique and their adrenaline to make their performing voice sound clean and strong (in the same way that an actor could finish a show with a sprained ankle and not feel the pain until afterwards).  There are a lot of performers out there that have full-blown nodes or the beginning of nodes and ignore the situation because they can still perform loudly.  Can you hold out a sustained note on an “ahhhh” as softly as possible, making it very clear, not quivering or breathy or gravelly?  Success with that exercise will help you recognize if you have perfect vocal control and health.

Vocal health tips 

            Next issue I’ll give you many practical tips to avoid and soothe a sore throat and allergy symptoms.  Here’s the best one, to get you started towards a healthier voice.

            1.  Drink water, water, water, and more water (room temperature or warm).  Flush out the illness, flush out the toxins, flush out the icky phlegm.  Squeeze lemon juice into your water bottle to cut phlegm.  (But don’t suck on a lemon, as it can ruin your tooth enamel).  Use lemon if you have phlegm, BUT if your throat is dry, don’t use lemon.  Instead, put honey in your water, or suck on non-sugary cough drops.  Also if your throat is dry, avoid grapefruit juice, as strong citrus robs your throat of the bit of mucus it needs in order to function.

More next issue!  So hang on to this installment.

Ginny Kopf has been a college instructor, vocal performance coach and private trainer in Orlando for over 22 years.  She has an MA in Theatre Voice and an MFA in Therapeutic Voice, and has authored The Dialect Handbook, Accent Reduction Workshop, and dozens of published articles.

Contact information:  www.voiceandspeechtraining.com

For more tips, advice, private training, info on classes in Central Florida, contact Ginny Kopf, at gkvoice@cfl.rr.com. www.voiceandspeechtraining.com For over 28 years, Ginny has given private lessons, taught college courses and workshops in voice, singing, accent reduction, public speaking, and dialects, and has authored The Dialect Handbook, and Accent Reduction for Professional American Speech CD set.