The Voice, It Is a-Changin'

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To all who celebrate - Happy World Menopause Day!

You know the old saying, if you've met one woman who's gone through menopause, you've met . . . . one woman who's gone through menopause.

Truly, while there are some symptoms that seem to be universal, there are others that are more unique - or at least, less discussed than others.

Sure, hot flashes and mood swings may get all the press, but there can be more other, more subtle symptoms too. Some women report experience thinning hair, or joint pain, or "brain fog."

Me? I started noticing a change in my voice.

I'm currently still in that hormonal honeymoon we refer to as "perimenopause." Because I'm a singer and a voiceover artist, I'm pretty aware of both the feel and the sound of my voice.

Sometime during the past year, I started noticing that my voice would get hoarse more easily than it used to. It would feel fatigued faster, too. It also just felt, well, different. Subtle maybe, but I started to feel like it was affecting the quality of my auditions. And that's a pretty important part of being a voice actor. Now on most days, I drink lots of water, so I didn't think that was the problem. And I didn't feel sick, so that wasn't the issue. It's not so significant that it keeps me from doing anything that I need to do, it was just kind of odd.

Somewhere along the way, I began to wonder if it could be related to . . the change. You know, THAT change. So I threw the question out there on social media - had anyone if experienced any vocal changes - such as decreased range or hoarseness - during perimenopause. And this is where it probably makes sense to stop for a minute to clarify the meaning of the words I'm using. According to MayoClinic.org, "Perimenopause means "around menopause" and refers to the time during which your body makes the natural transition to menopause, marking the end of the reproductive years." Menopause is defined as "the time that marks the end of your menstrual cycles. It's diagnosed after you've gone 12 months without a menstrual period."

That's a nice enough definition and all, but to me, menopause sounds like the promised land. But anyway.

Back to my social media ask. I only got a couple of responses. One woman wrote and said her voice had definitely gotten deeper - from a mezzo-soprano range to an alto. And another wrote me to tell me how during perimenopause, voice was very gravelly without any explanation for nearly a year - so much so that sometimes it cracked "like a teenage boy's." She lost her upper soprano notes during the time period, and nothing that she and her doctors tried - steroids, antibiotics, etc. - made any difference. Then, mysteriously, it got better and her voice has been back to normal ever since.

I asked if anyone ever mentioned the possibility of it being related to menopause. She said no. But she thought the timing was odd.

Two women with interesting experiences. And me. A large data set that is not.

So I searched online, which I had done initially, but had been underwhelmed with my findings. And probably because I was very tired the first time I looked (fatigue, after all, is another symptom of menopause!) I saw a couple of things I hadn't noticed initially.

The first was an article from ChoralNet called "Singing Through Menopause," from July 2018, by Lynn Swanson. (Full article at https://choralnet.org/archives/569875) In it, she explains why the voice is affected by hormonal changes: She writes, "Estrogen deprivation causes substantial changes in the mucous membranes that line the vocal tract. As estrogen levels decrease, laryngeal tissues begin to absorb water causing the vocal folds to swell, blood vessels to become enlarged, and vocal fold mass to increase." So, yes. Hormonal changes can wreak havoc on any part of our body - vocal folds included.

The article is aimed primarily at singers, and goes on to suggest many great vocal exercises for keeping the aging voice in shape. And even though I was already familiar with most of them, I'm going to be printing out this list and keeping it in my studio so I can refer to it daily.

The other discovery was a book called "Singing Through Change: Women's In Midlife, Menopause, and Beyond," by Nancy Bos, Cate Frazier-Neely, and Joanne Bozeman. I've not yet read it. But I just downloaded it on my Kindle and am looking so forward to diving into it. There's also a corresponding website, at https://singingthroughchange.com/ , which has what looks to be an abundance of resources. As with the book, I'm excited for all this information, and thankful to these authors for putting it all out there. The very fact that the book exists gives me a measure of comfort.

So can my vocal changes be attributable to menopause? In my opinion, yes. But - one last note here. When I posed that question on social media, only one person responded publicly. It was a male friend of mine, asking if I was having any of the symptoms I'd mentioned. I said yes, and he responded that he was concerned because he'd just read an article about throat cancer and some of the same symptoms could be attributable to that.

And you know what? I'm not really worried about it. But I'm also NOT a doctor. And since I do have a yearly physical coming up soon, I have put this on my list of things to ask about. And I thank him for bringing this to my attention. If you have any experiences with vocal changes that you'd like to share, I'd be so interested to hear them. Drop me a line at Christy@SpadaforeVoice.com

Thanks for reading and/or listening And happy thinking and talking!