Reading time: 4-5 minutes
Singing after illness or after bouts of vocal fatigue (especially when viruses, colds, sinus issues, mucous-heavy bugs have hit you) is a critical topic to consider. There is a certain amount you CANNOT do as you have to let an illness run its course. However, there are also things you can do to ensure your voice is as good as it can be for when the virus finishes it’s run. In this post, I wanted to take you through five key tips I use as part of my regimen to a) get my voice through a tricky throat virus or cold-based sickness, and b) alleviate how the symptoms can further aggravate your voice.
1. Drink more water, and reduce/cut out diuretics like caffeine
When you’re in the full throes of a bug, you need to stay hydrated. Particularly with excess mucous, the more water you provide your body with, the easier it will be to shift. A doctor once advised me the reason the flu capsules you get at chemists make you feel better so quickly is NOT because of the paracetamol or other drugs, but because of the caffeine. It naturally makes you feel better when you’re feeling rough, so go ahead and enjoy a coffee or tea.
However at the tail end, when it’s the last little bit of mucous left, I find that the caffeine’s diuretic effect really affects my ability to shift that last little bit. It seems to cause the mucous to get exceedingly thick and physically just very difficult to shift. This promotes extra coughing, unsuccessfully trying to shift it. So do try and reduce your intake of caffeine, coffee, tea, soft drinks, etc, especially towards the tail end of the illness.
2. SLEEP, and vocal rest
When you get sick, or hit the wall with vocal fatigue (or general life-fatigue) you need to rest. Exercise, general expulsion of energy, etc, it all prevents you getting better – you can’t recover from being under the weather or run-down if you’ve already spent some of your energy reserves (as well as far more specific bodily functions, e.g. cortisol, adrenaline, etc) at the expense of your recovery. In one case of recovery post-illness, I ended up forcing myself to bed at 9pm at night each night (knowing I wouldn’t sleep through the night), and took a 2-3 hour nap in the day in order to ensure that I was not failing my body in the sleep stakes. A lot of people try to return to singing after illness far too quickly, or before they’ve even fully recovered.
So if you get sick or get hammered (vocally speaking), seriously, go to bed.
But what if your night-time rest is disrupted? Or the ailment is manifesting at night? How do you recover then?
3. Beware of post-nasal drip
This week I caught the cold my wife and daughter both had. The cold itself was relatively minor for me, but as the cold was finishing, post-nasal drip began. In this case, the remnants of the infection lingered in the back of nose and sinuses, and during the night would drip the infected material down onto the vocal folds. Delicious, isn’t it. There were no symptoms other than night-time voice problems.
I would go to bed with a somewhat normal voice, wake up in the night with a burning sensation at the back of my throat, then get up in the morning with a swollen hot mess of a voice. It was like I’d screamed my voice into nothing each night.
It took a day or two to both recognise the signs enough to seek the right treatment, and to understand this particular instance was going to require intervention. This was so damaging to my voice, I had to cancel my entire week’s worth of sessions. For comparison, I’ve had laryngitis that I’ve regained function from in a day or two. But it’s only through rest and night-time healing that you can recover, and in this case the post-nasal drip meant it was not possible.
If you find yourself suffering with this, other than staying hydrated (per point 1) and getting plenty of rest (per point 2), it’s helpful to find a way to prop yourself up at night whilst you sleep (e.g. extra pillows). This reduces the extent to which the drip can land on your vocal folds and cause inflammation.
In terms of other interventions, there are two decent options:
1) Nasal irrigation – This is how it sounds. This essentially involves running water through your nose to clear out the infected material. You should use sterilised water rather than just snorting water out of your hand in the shower, as other infections can be introduced if not done properly. Irrigation kits can be purchased online, but there are none I can/would recommend myself.
2) Steroidal nasal sprays – Often with difficult/stubborn issues like this, mild steroids are a good way to get it to shift. In the UK, we can’t typically get these without a prescription, but there is one option I’m aware of and have used myself. The nasal spray Beconase contains the mild steroid Beclametasone dipropionate. It isn’t to be huffed constantly throughout the day, but once in the morning and once in the evening. There are some potential side-effects, so please do read the label. Standard disclaimer: I am not seeking to give medical advice, but to share the protocol that I use myself that I have found effective for handling this issue.
Either way, know that post-nasal drip is no joke. Sometimes it’s minor, but it sometimes it can totally destroy your voice and you’ll need to take action.
4. Reduce mucous stimulating foods and avoid things that promote inflammation
There is a mucosal lining on our vocal cords, it’s meant to be there. What happens when we get a throat related bug is that our body often responds by generating excess mucous to capture other bugs and respond to the illness. This is what creates that gungy horror that lives in your throat when sick. As such, we don’t want to stimulate extra production of this mucous. Milk, eggs, chocolate, yoghurt, etc, those kinds of things for many can exacerbate production of mucous, thus making the issue worse.
Inflammation also is an issue (as it goes hand in hand with mucous), so try to avoid things that cause inflammation, e.g. excessively hot food, anything you have even a mild allergy too, etc. It will involve experimenting to see what works for you, which sadly means it’s going to take a few illnesses before you dial your own self-care routine down.
EXTRA: One of my clients is a chemist who worked for Boots. He happened to be part of the team that developed the chesty cough formulation for clearing mucous. The key active ingredient is guaifenisen. If you get a chesty cough mix, or even just a mucous thinner (some pharmacies sell simpler formulations containing near enough only guaifenisen), this will help hydrate the thin mucous and make it easier to shift. I believe he recommended a dose of 400mg to be effective.
5. STOP COUGHING SO DAMN MUCH
We all cough and clear our throats WAY too much. Yes, we have a biological response to ensure we don’t have things blocking our airways, but we have a cultural thing of always clearing our throats – in the best case scenario this is very wearing, in the worse scenario it is impactful and damaging. Instead of constantly coughing, carry a bottle of water with you and whenever you feel like coughing just take a tiny sip to soothe your throat and replace that cough mechanism.
Sometimes you WILL have to cough, but once you start following the advice, you’ll find it’s far rare than you think, and you can control it a lot better. You’ll also find your voice doesn’t stay as messed up as long once you stop aggravating the vocal cords with constant coughing.
6. Lip bubbles / Semi-occluded exercises
Lip bubbles are a form of semi-occluded exercise, where the flow of air from the mouth during the exercise is partially blocked to create back-pressure on the larynx. These exercises are very low impact and brilliant for ensuring the voice is functioning over the range of the exercise in question. Assuming I am able to vocalise, I will use these in a very controlled way to both keep my voice ticking over during the illness, shake off excess mucous gently without coughing, and also to rehabilitate my voice as I can feel my voice is coming back.
During one winter, I got a particularly stubborn throat cold. It lingered for over a month. It was likely one rhinovirus into another, but it felt like one long slog. Once the worst of it had subsided I had to spend an entire day building my voice back up. Easily 60% of the practice was spent doing different formulations of the lip bubble or other semi-occlusive exercises in order to get the vocal cords behaving and moving through the various bridges/registers correctly. I had something similar in the last week with post-nasal drip after a relatively mild cold.
There you have it…
… my six main tips for how I coax my voice back to life both during and after a bad throat bug.
Please bear in mind these are the things that I find most helpful, most find at least some (if not all) of these are helpful, but you may well find other things matter more to you as you experiment. I do steam, I do drink different drinks, but I feel the most helpful points are above. Note I do not subscribe to singers’ tea products, or throat pastilles, etc. Rest, correct diet, correct respect for your body, and correct application of technique will be sufficient to get you back to singing after illness.
Learn More: Related Articles
If you want to learn more about vocal health and voice issues, you may enjoy the following articles:
Shouting masquerading as singing: Why so many singers are just yelling
Why vocal problems so regularly derail careers, permanently
Famous Singers with Voice Problems
My Singing Voice Hurts: 5 Habits for Vocal Health
Vocal Longevity: The Icarus Effect
Why do I keep losing my voice: Overuse, Misuse and Abuse
The Seriousness of Vocal Fold Nodules