Your Most Overlooked Organ—Your Voice Box.

Most of us hardly ever think about our voice box, unless we read about a major singer who can no longer sing or speak because she has injured hers.
Your voice box consists of a little muscle the size of an adult thumbnail. It looks like an inverted V, covered with a layer called a mucous membrane.
The V shape is formed by two separate muscles located side by side and facing one another. They open and close, depending on whether you are talking. When you listen and are silent, this V is supposed to be open; it is connected to a tube, the esophagus, which branches out and connects to the lungs. When the V is open you can inhale and exhale. If the V is closed when you are silent, you will most likely turn blue, pass out, or even die.
When you talk, you speak on the air when you are exhaling. You cannot speak when you are inhaling. The V closes and the muscle vibrates. That is how you make audible tones. The muscles come together and touch in the middle of the V in order to create pleasant and clear speech.
If you use your voice improperly by overly pushing on this muscle when you speak, you produce a hoarse sound. If the muscle swells—for example, when you have a cold—you also sound hoarse, as the two sides of the muscle have trouble coming together and vibrating. If you push these muscles too hard over a long period of time or you put too much pressure on the top part of the muscle when you speak, you will also sound hoarse or raspy. This is cause by two calluses, or nodes, that grow on the top of the muscle. When an actor or singer overstrains her muscle continuously, she develops these nodes and has difficulty singing and speaking.
Non-actors and non-speakers who talk a lot also develop this problem. Even children develop these nodes if they scream and yell a lot.
Additionally, if one of the vocal cords is paralyzed due to trauma or stroke, the voice may sound very breathy, and it may be difficult to make oneself understood. If you apply constant pressure to your voice box by speaking on the lower end of the V, you may develop what is known as contact ulcers.
A speech therapist or speech pathologist who specializes in voice therapy can usually help you. Before you engage in speech therapy, you must ask the therapist if her specialty is voice therapy and how many voice cases she has seen over the past year. If she has seen fewer than 50 cases throughout the year, or does not have a master’s or Ph.D. in speech pathology or speech and hearing sciences, and is not licensed by the state, don’t see her!
If therapy doesn’t help, you may need surgery to remove these growths on your vocal cords and additional voice therapy to learn how to properly use your voice so growths don’t appear again. Coming up, you learn how to care for your voice and how to use it properly, so that you don’t have any problems.
The following list gives some rules to follow so you don’t damage your voice. The next section of this chapter helps you remedy any speech and voice problems you might have.
Rules for Vocal Health:
• No smoking
• No drugs (except prescription)
• No alcohol
• Don’t sleep with your mouth open
• Don’t yell or scream
• Don’t talk over loud noise
• Don’t clear your throat
• Don’t talk too loud
• Don’t talk too much
• Limit consumption of dairy products
• Use throat lozenges whenever needed
• Drink lots of water
• Avoid spicy foods