Singing Through Change - Hydration

Talk about hydration, frankly, as we all take a drink. Have you— I have a friend, she, she has extremely dry mouth and throat and has for years. She's in her late 50s and she's had it for at least 5 years. Her lips get chapped, so she's always putting chapstick on, but she's single and probably celibate, so I have no idea what's going on on the other end, but She's always very dry. And she said to me last year when I told her about this, she said, find an answer for this for me. You know, this is, this is not okay. And I'm okay. So, my dear, I'm not gonna say her name, what research have you done? Well, I don't have time. I'm a professor. I've got a horse. I've got my job. I can't, I can't take the time to do the research.

I would say, has she had her thyroid checked?

What would be some other symptoms of a thyroid being off?

Well, dryness, um, I think cold fingers, um, feeling of poor circulation to her fingers, uh, really lack of energy, weight, low energy, either weight gain or weight loss depending on if it's hypo or hyper.

My mom had hyperthyroid and She ended up— yeah, she had to have her thyroid radiated, irradiated, and, and then she has to take thyroid medication for the rest of her life.

So hypo and hyper do kind of different things. Hypo for sure can have effects on the voice, right on the vocal fold tissue.

I also think that it's worth saying that thyroid problems can come from hormonal imbalance, and we've talked about how the adrenal glands are meant to pick up estrogen reproduction when the reproductive organs are starting their cessation. Yeah, that's normal. And yet in living in this culture that we've lived in, which is pretty high stress for all people, but especially women and women of color and men of color, um, the adrenals are taken up by so much stress that they can't do their natural function for women by produce the estrogen, and that's going to throw thyroid off. Rarely ever hear this when you go to an endocrinologist.

That was the next question was going to be regarding the thyroid or the dry mouth, or what kind of doctor does she go to? A gynecologist? Does she go to a GP, endocrinologist?

Primary care can do blood tests and they can see where her thyroid hormone levels are just to start out routinely.

Yeah, I think that it's always wise to get thyroid levels checked. Endocrinologists will say, just let's leave it and see what happens, and sometimes it will even out. Yeah, if it doesn't, this is where working integrative health, which is Western medicine who have a broader perspective of the human body than maybe traditional Western medicine, right? This may help because they can balance thyroid and adrenals in ways other than medication, which works for some people. You always have to find your own solution.

You're right.

I've found myself that the things that have made the biggest difference for me hormonally, besides HRT, is yoga, meditation, and green tea. And there isn't there aren't very many Western medicine doctors who would prescribe yoga, meditation, and green tea before looking for another solution. But back to the hydration issue, dry tissue in the throat and the vagina is a symptom of menopause.

Yeah, right.

So it's something that a lot of women are dealing with, and I don't think I've ever seen a commercial on TV that says, you know, like Viagra for men, you know, Hydration for women. Is it— would drinking more sports drinks or more hydrating drinks make a difference? I don't think so because the problem is with the saliva production.

Yeah, well, there's another thing, and I don't know where your, your person is in her menopausal status.

Is she about—

she's about 3 years in.

Okay, she's 3 years in.

Well, went over the bridge.

The reproductive hormones actually support support the secretory glands that are right around the larynx.

Right.

So the mucus there is going to be thicker and less watery. So that's why it feels dry right on the larynx, but also I think the whole throat area can be dry. I am not sure. I think general hydration certainly couldn't hurt, but it's not going to like re-up those little glands. The way we want them to. But I think sometimes— I call them suckies, you know, kinds of lozenges can help, gum. A lot of people have trouble with dry mouth, and I know that there are mouth rinses that some people use. Sometimes dry mouth is a side effect of other medications that they're taking.

Yes, it's called— the technical term for it is xerostoma, the dry mouth is. And allergy medications cause xerostoma.

Right, and if somebody is on medication for anxiety or depression, those real common side effect is, is, you know, cystitis.

Well, this, this whole idea of hydration is an interesting topic because what is menopausal and what is due to some of these other things that you're talking about? And it's, if people want just one solution like I'm dry all the time. Like, I think we have another person we interviewed who was dry, went to her doctor, he tested her for diabetes because that's another symptom. Um, thirst is a symptom of diabetes, which proved to be negative.

Correct.

But if you want a one-size-fits-all solution, it's not going— we can't tell you that. We can say this is happening, this is what we found in our research, this is what we've done for ourselves. I eat a lot of melon. Watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes. People are worried about excess sugar by eating fruit, but in my case, it's great, it's great. It really helps hydrate. It doesn't raise my cholesterol.

And high fiber too, right? Which is also—

High fiber, oh yeah, I can clean out real easy.

I think that's pretty important. Cheese doesn't have much sugar, but it's not gonna help with the fiber.

I don't know about sports drinks because I think they can have a lot of sugar in them.

A lot of salt, actually, too.

A lot of sodium, yeah.

I know that people say that if you're in a hurry to hydrate, like if you say, oops, I didn't drink enough yesterday and I have a performance tomorrow, the sports drinks get on board more efficiently. Efficiently than plain water just because of the— what do they call the electrolytes?

Yes, the electrolytes. I'm glad you said I have to sing tomorrow and I haven't been drinking enough because the best advice I ever heard was hydrate today to sing tomorrow.

But there's another solution to the sports drinks, which is coconut water. If you drink regular alkaline water with a little bit of coconut water in it. It has the enzymes and the minerals you need. And some women can do sports drinks, like if you run 30 miles a week, you can basically drink whatever you want. But no, I think I've run a total of a mile in the past year. So I—

Camila Diaz loves that.

Finding something that doesn't have the extra fructose and sodium is really important.

Right, and then there's some topical things that can help too, especially I think for people that need to talk for their jobs, or they need to sing, is steaming is getting a lot more traction. These little personal steamers, I've seen really cool stuff about that online and recommendations of brands. They're not— most of them are not super expensive.

Right.

I've seen voice professionals and people that are actually singing saying this is really helpful for me before I sing, between sets. And that does get down on your vocal folds. Drinking doesn't, but this will get down in there.

And you know, I think too that you might find something that works for a year or two or even three, and then it stops working and you have to go to plan B. Because this is, this is a long stretch of years we're talking about here.

That's a good point.

You know, and if you find something that works so you can stick with it, fine. If it stops working, it's back to the drawing board.

Yeah, I want to point out with the steamer, I got to talk to Ingo Titze about that, and Ingo, Dr. Ingo Titze is the leading voice scientist Of all time?

Is that fair to say? Leading, the leading voice scientist.

Oh no, L-E-A-D, lead.

No blood involved.

I wondered what that face was for. What is she saying?

Yes, the N started lead.

So rather than leading, I think he would probably prefer to be called the father of modern voice science. Yeah, because so many— I got the pleasure of doing an EverySing podcast episode with him, so we got to talk for an hour, just him and And you can, you can all listen to it. He, he went into the field because there were no answers. And now, let's see, that was the 1960s, so 60 years later he can say there are all these people studying this, I can't even keep up with them. So that's why I say he's the father of it.

But at any rate, the father of voice science, you mean?

Modern Voice Science.

Yeah, Modern Voice Science, right?

Vocology.

Vocology. Yeah.

So, but not, not the leading expert on women's voices during menopause, right? Let's go there next.

So, so anyhow, back to steaming. He said, and this was 2 years ago, that you get 20 minutes of moisture from steaming. Within 20 minutes, you've blown all that moisture back out into the atmosphere. So steaming right before you sing, steaming right before you vocalize, steaming, you know, a steamer in the green room, that makes sense to him. But steaming for an everyday benefit, like my mom— I keep referring to her— she has got big issues with dryness because of sodium problems and She can't sing in church anymore, and so I got her a personal steamer, and for about a year, if she steamed right before she went to church, then she could sing for some of the service. But that, like you said, Kate, that only lasted for a while, and I guess her body figured out how to sabotage that.

Oh my, wow.

Well, hey, is there anything else you guys want to add about hydration before we wrap up?

As long as we're talking about hydration in the vocal folds, I think that we probably should talk a little bit about dryness in the folds down south.

Sure, because if we're not going to talk about it, who will, Kate?

Let's just go there, and Joanne can talk a little bit about why there are some similarities in the cellular structures, right, between the vocal folds and the vaginal tissue, because women are going to know that they've got problems down there.

And they may not realize that they've got the same problems up here.

Yeah, that it's all related. And as one of our interviewees said, it's dry as the Sahara down there. I want to point out that if you are in a sexual relationship and you feel burning afterwards that you've never felt before, that's a sign that the vaginal tissues are dry and they are being slightly, slightly shredded is a bit of a too harsh a word.

Abrasion though.

But there is abrasion and I remember that I went through years of this without, with my husband, without realizing that what was going on and I just came across a friend. It's not like, hey, haven't talked to you for a while, let's talk about vaginas. It came out and she's my age, she's 63, and she's in a marriage with her third husband and she said, "Oh my God, that's it!" Wow. She said because she's a breast cancer survivor and she can't take hormone therapy. Yeah. And she didn't connect her dry skin and the way her voice sort of creaks with dryness and with what was going on there. And so that's something you can talk to your gynecologist about.

Yeah, because if you can solve one, you can solve the other.

Yeah, and that you can get a little bit of estrogen cream to use, and it doesn't work its way into the blood system. It's just topical. And even if you're not sexually active anymore, it makes things feel better.

Right, I can add to that a little bit. There are creams that go, that you insert into the vagina. There are also at least one form of tablet, like a suppository, that is way less messy and works really well. Those are both estradiol-based or estrogen-based products, and those you'd need a prescription for. And there are also topical things like, is it Lubriderm, or no, no, no, that's not right. Anyway, some things you can just go to the drugstore and find that are topical that might help too. And again, Kate, you're right, the dosages are so much less. They're not systemic, and even for some people, and you'd have to talk about this to your doctors, they are not as risky for people that have a history with cancer or a risk for cancer. So they're not necessarily off the table, these local products with estrogen in them. I'll add one more thing too that I wasn't aware of, but bladder symptoms, urgency, discomfort, pain are also—

I can talk about this one.

Because the tissue of the vagina and of the lower part of the bladder and the urethra are the same kind of tissue. So—

Oh my God, I didn't know that.

Yeah, if your vagina is dry Your urethra is probably dry and icky feeling and constricted, and then also the bladder is uncomfortable as well. These products will help your bladder and urethra as well.

But they're not edible. I can't use them to treat my vocal folds. I can't use the suppository as a lozenge.

Nope. Dr. Jean Abitol was married to, again, gynecologist, and he was discounting his patients, his singing patients, who would complain about problems with voices right before their menstrual period. And he would sort of poo-poo and say it's all in their heads. And she's going, it's not in their heads, and we will prove it. So they did, and they did— they repeated this several times. I think the first one was maybe in the early '90s, maybe the late '80s. And they did— they took cell samples from the vocal folds themselves and from the cervix at different times of the month, and they looked at them under microscopes, and the cellular structures were really, really similar. They showed the same kind of changes throughout the, the times of the month where hormones are changing. So that proved that these, these areas are really, really similar and that they do respond to fluctuating hormone levels. And that was like, that was a big change in science when, when they did these studies. So women were not making it up, and some women do suffer from some voice issues right before their period, and it's, they, um, it's related to hormone levels.

Got it. Thank you.

Thanks. Bye.