A Gift of Celestial Melody

Even a gift can get overused to its destruction.

BIBLICAL wisdom contends that any gift unused will cease to be. Clinical experience, however, observed that frequently used gifts, while they may not disappear, can be so strained that these will eventually become unusable. In fact, these can be plagued with disease of overuse, so that further use of it can be dangerous to the person’s health.

This observation has particular relevance among those who use their voice as their work instruments: singers, fitness club instructors, salespeople, telemarketing operators, receptionists, actors, teachers and more.

A more recent study on 4,495 primary and secondary school teachers in Salvador City in Brazil confirmed earlier studies that frequent use of their voice in line with their chosen professional work can lead to diseases in the vocal folds. These voice disorders usually persist (unless treated) at least 15 days to years after diagnoses, and include such conditions as vocal fold nodules, lesions, polyps, presence of edemas, and even minor structural changes of the mucosa and the glottal chinks, or the opening of the glottis (the combination of the vocal folds and the space in-between, which creates voice).

The De Souza study in 2011, sponsored by the State University of Bahia (Salvador, Brazil) found that the teachers had 12-13 percent prevalence of vocal fold nodules, which had been with them for a long time already.

An earlier Fortes study, also in Brazil, in 2007 found organic lesions in 20 percent of the teachers involved. Vocal fold nodules were noted in 13.8 percent of the teachers, 20.5 percent in women (only 3.2 percent in men). In Spain, the Urrtikoetxea study of 1995 noted overall prevalence of vocal fold diseases in 20 percent of the teachers observed. Pathological location of glottal chinks occurred in 79 percent.

In all these studies, presence of polyps, edemas and cysts in the vocal folds had been noted in a few teachers.

Aggravating factors that made female teachers the most affected by vocal fold diseases included... [READ MORE]

This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 27 March 2013.

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