1.

Rest

You should be able tell when your throat starts getting stressed. Itching, burning, or any
unpleasant sensation that is aggravated by speaking indicates that your voice is dying. When
that happens, stop speaking immediately. That means staying in seclusion as much as you can
or engaging people only if they will respect your vocal rest.Communicate with gestures; carry
a notebook. Use a text-to-speech app. Do whatever it takes; you should speak only when you
absolutely have to. When youre silent, your voice is healing. When you speak, it is being
damaged. Its that simple.

Clearing your throat and coughing put a lot of stress on your vocal chords. Keep that to a
minimum.

2. Drink

When youre sick, proper hydration becomes even more important. But theres a bigger
reason to be drinking: keeping your throat wet. Add a dash of cranberry juice to take the
gross sick-mouth taste out of the water and loosen the mucus but dont put too much in or
youll be on a sugar rush for days. You should be taking a sip at least every few minutes. If
you stay diligent about keeping your throat wet, youll find your need to cough or clear your
throat greatly reduced.

3. Minimize

A big source of throat congestion is nose congestion draining down your trachea. Keep your
nose as clear as you can. Dont sniffle. Seriously, dont sniffle ever. Youre just pulling
mucus onto your throat. Blow your nose as much as you have to. Use decongestants like
Afrin nasal spray, and use a neti pot to rinse your nasal passages. You want as little mucus in
your nose as possible, and what does appear needs to all exit your nose out the front. Youll
need a lot of Kleenex for this; anything else will make your nostrils very raw. Either way,
you can alleviate the chapping by dabbing lotion on it. If youre horribly congested and your
tissues are bloody, dab a little lotion inside the nostril as soon as its its dry enough. Use an
amount about a quarter the size of an airsoft pellet.

While lying back and resting is appealing, it makes more mucus drain from your nose to your
throat. Keep your upper body as upright as you can; prop up pillows when you sleep. This is
one of the hardest parts of being sick when you need to speak, but it makes a big difference.

4. Clean

Several times a day, gargle warm salt water, then hack and spit. You should get a lot of
mucus coming out with the water. Do this more often if your throat is sore; it really helps.

Now heres the grossest trick youll read in this article. Seriously, its disgusting and tedious.
But it works. If you have a tournament around the corner, power through it. Okay, ready?
Here goes:

Whenever you feel mucus on the back of your tongue perhaps because you just gargled, or
because the cranberry juice loosened it, or because you coughed it up spit it out. Lean over
the nearest sink or toilet or tissue waste basket and make a kissing shape with your lips. Roll
all the grossness up to the front of your mouth and spit it out. Repeat until theres nothing left
on your tongue. If theres a lot, stick your tongue out and wipe it off with your hand
cleaning your hand under running water after every stroke. When you first wake up, youll be
doing this a lot probably after every sip. Its tedious, but its far better than having that
mucus hardening over your vocal chords. Once you get used to it, your old habit of
swallowing the mucus back will seem even grosser to you.

5. Expectorate

No matter how careful you are, youre going to get some mucus buildup on your throat. As it
hardens, it becomes very difficult to dislodge and causes enormous stress to your throat.
Loosen it with an expectorant, which signals your body to moisten the mucus so it can be
dislodged. Mucinex is perfect for that. Take one every four hours starting when you begin
clearing your throat/spitting. Double-check the active ingredients you want Guaifenesin
only. You should only use a cough suppressant if you cant stop coughing, and you shouldnt
be coughing much or at all if you followed the other steps.

6. Soothe

Keep a sugar-free menthol cough drop in your mouth at all times. Dont chew it or suck on it,
just let it release vapors into the back of your throat. This doesnt control mucus, but it does
relax your throat so it isnt as irritated by speaking or coughing which in turn means youll
cough a lot less and your throat will take less damage. Expect to go through a bag or two over
the course of your illness.

Nothing is more frustrating than losing your voice when you need it. Follow these six steps,
and your voice stands the best possible shot of surviving or at the least, recovering quickly.

Spasmodic Dysphonia Tips from Russell Townsley of North Carolina

I should point out , I did these steps without any noticeable benefit for months and months. I
think for me the trick was to master all the techniques needed to get a normal voice. Once I
did that, my voice came back pretty quickly, but it took almost a year. I seemed to developed
my case gradually over a 10 year period of time and really believed my problems were not
neurological, but due to bad habits. BUT, I sounded EXACTLY like a classic case of SD, and
the doctors said I had SD To me this is irrelevant since apparently it is very difficult to
define different cases of speech problems. What I did will sound like Morton Cooper now,
I realize he is hated (not too strong a term to describe the sentiments) in the on-line
community. But the fact, of the matter is, what I did was strongly influenced by a lady who
was "cured" by him. And what she showed me saved me, too.

Somebody helped me once and I'm thrilled to try to help other folks too. Good luck!! Russ

Here's what I usually send folks who ask:

My voice used to cut in and out as if I had a "short circuit" and I was very raspy. Often I
could not be understood at all. I was diagnosed by 2 speech pathologists with "severe SD"
and would never speak normally again without botox. In the end, though, I guess I was very
lucky to have had a case that was beatable, or maybe I was misdiagnosed. If that's the case,
I'm certain many others are too, since I was told I was a classic case. I'm not a doctor or a
speech therapist, but I know precisely what helped me and I share it whenever I have a
chance. I've been problem free for about 2 or 3 years and don't even think about it anymore
except when trying to help people. If something here helps somebody, it would make me
really happy. Anyway here's the approach:

1) Admit on a deep level that you have a voice disorder and commit yourself to declaring war
on it. I regarded my situation as a battle for my life as I knew it. The way to channel this
intensity is to begin giving gentle but relentless attention to your voice mechanics. Accept at
the outset that you will need to pay attention to mechanics nearly every waking moment -
even when not speaking. Don't let go more than 10 minutes go by without checking your
breathing, etc. This is up to you. Speech therapy won't accomplish this for you.

2) Relearn breathing; lie flat on your back. Put one hand on your chest and one on your belly.
The hand on your belly SHOULD move up and down as you breathe. The one on your chest
should not move. Become aware of this throughout the day, even when not speaking. Keep a
hand on your belly. Try to fall asleep breathing correctly. If you do, you will get a whole
night of good breathing in and you will start to form new habits. Relearning breathing has a
lot of benefits, it will relax you too. Relaxation will help indirectly with the SD too, but
proper breathing is crucial.

3) You have to make sure you are speaking from the nose and face. DO NOT speak from the
throat. Practice speaking in the most nasal voice you can come up with. The idea is your new
voice will settle in between. I'm assuming here that you probably speak down in your throat
like most SD folks that I've been aware of. Is your voice raspy? Go get a kazoo from a toy
store. Can you get a note out of one? If not you are speaking too far down in your throat.

4) You need to find a new "pitch"(as in a note in the musical scale) from which to speak.
Speak either higher or lower. I can't tell you which one, but I had to go lower. Now, be sure
when you speak lower, that you are speaking lower in pitch not lower in your throat. It is easy
to make this mistake. Speaking from the throat is the last thing you want to do.

5) Practice saying HMMM HMMMMM one, HMMM HMMMM two etc. Make sure you
resonate each syllable.

6) Practice "breathing out your voice" CAREFUL: don't speak down the throat when you do
this (that's an easy mistake to make, so be careful). Here's an exercise to illustrate the
concept: blow out a candle with a long slow, steady stream. Now do it again, only this time,
say"aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh". Now say aaaahhhh again only, vary the volume
like this: AHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh".
Capital letters indicate more volume and small letters indicate quieter volume. It's like a
vibrato, in music lingo. Here's the important part: Make sure this is driven from the belly
(really the diaphragm). When you do this, you should feel the belly pulling in as you exhale
the sound. You are driving your voice from the belly now. This may be a difficult thing for
you because your vocal cords will try to shut. If so, this is directly addressing your problem.
Practice doing this without opening your mouth very wide to begin with - experiment with it
but keep at it.

7) The above may take many months. Again, being patient and diligent is crucial to making
all this work. It took me 10 to 11 months, and sometimes it seemed like it would never work.
But when my voice started coming back, it came back pretty quickly. The hard part was
remembering all of the above simultaneously. You have to remember: Breathing, pitch, voice
focus(nose and face) and finally, while you are doing this, relax your whole abdomen. It's not
easy to remember all this things. First you have to perfect each, then you have to perform
them all perfected, simultaneously. It won't be easy, but it will be a heck of a lot easier than
living with SD.

8) You may feel like you are developing a "phony" voice. Please don't worry about that. If
this gets in the way of your improvement, it means you haven't suffered long enough yet. So
do yourself a favor and say "enough". Somewhere along the line, you have to quit identifying
with the old voice. The old SD voice is not you! Besides, trust me on this: when your new
voice comes along, NOBODY will even notice it other than to say, gosh, John/Susan is
sounding better these days". But most people won't even notice THAT unless you point it
out. They'll just be able to understand you better, but it probably won't even occur to them.
Fear of a new voice hold people back, in my opinion. Find a "place of poise" from which to
speak if possible. I don't think anxiety caused my voice problems, but it didn't helped any
when I was trying to relearn speaking habits. Don't try to project a personality through your
voice - be like Mr. Rogers: just speak slowly and resonate for the sake of getting your
message out.

9) While you are relearning your voice, you should try to minimize speaking during the day.
Some folks who have to speak for a living may need a life style change. I can't suggest you
quit your job if you have to speak a lot but if you can avoid that sort of employment, it can
only help. The ideal thing to do is to only speak when you are practicing and on a bad voice
day, don't speak at all. This is the IDEAL and probably isn't going to be possible - but you get
the idea, I think.

So: keep your hand on your belly until you relearn breathing and practice that
AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHH exercise. The bottom line most important thing is that
you relearn how to drive your voice from your "belly" and NOT from your throat. When you
are speaking, put a hand on your belly and make sure it is pulling in as you exhale your voice.
Do this all day long, if you can.

Another exercise: Put your hand on your belly and hum the "Happy Birthday" song. Make
your version quick and "choppy". The notes MUST be driven from the belly. They should
begin and end as a result of breath flowing from your diaphragm. You should feel the belly
pull in, in quick little increments, as you exhale the melody. BE SURE you are not cutting the
notes off at your throat - if you do this you are practicing a bad habit. If your voice has been
raspy, remember to speak through the nose.

I used to speak in as nasal a voice as possible to practice. This probably sounded bizarre to
my wife, but it helped inmensly.

10) When you get as you have the above techniques down (and it may take months), practice
speaking very slowly - make sure you resonate each syllable. At this time, do this even in
public. If that's too hard for you it probably means you are still identifying too heavily with
the old voice. When you go to order food, etc. speak very, very slowly - yes, people will
think you are "mentally impaired" (get used to the idea) but the important thing now is to
RESONATE. I'd recommend keeping a sense of humor through all this if you can.