Post by teejay on Jan 17, 2020 14:45:43 GMT -6
Curious as to thoughts/experience from those of you who sing regularly.
As of late I've had some vocal issues, which I blamed on a nominal cold or virus, even though I don't have any other symptoms. It's worse in the AM, however it does impact me all day, especially when I try to sing in the evening. For the past several weeks I've been following the 16/8 intermittent fasting regimen. For those who may not know, you have a 16-hour window where you don't eat and only drink water and black coffee. No calories. Then you eat your regular day of calories in the remaining 8-hour window. Today I started wondering if my issues are related to this change in my eating schedule.
I did some quick research, and ran across a pubmed study on fasting and the male voice. The short study/result can be found here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20392525 , but in a nutshell is concludes that: "Phonatory effort was significantly greater during fasting (P < .001)...There was a significant decrease in the habitual pitch, voice turbulence index, and noise-to-harmonic ratio (P = .018, .045, and .001, respectively)." Doing additional research I found this: "The Harmonics-to-Noise (HNR) ratio is a measure of the proportion of harmonic sound to noise in the voice measured in decibels. (Ferrand, 2007). HNR quantifies the relative amount of additive noise (Awen & Frankel, 1994). The lower the HNR, the more noise in the voice....The greater the proportion of noise, the greater the perceived hoarseness, breathiness or roughness and the lower the HNR figure will be, i.e. a low HNR indicates a high level of hoarseness, and a high HNR indicates a low level of hoarseness. There is a strong relationship between how we perceive voice quality and the harmonic to noise ratio (Ferrand, 2007)." This is also described as what happens to a person's voice as they age, especially noticeable in elderly people.
Curious if you singers out there have experienced any impact on your voice based upon timing of meals/fasting. IF is not like a 24-hour+ fast, and I like what it is doing for my body and brain, but if it's responsible for my current vocal issues then I'll need to make some changes.
Kind of an obscure post, which is why I'm putting it in Off Topic.
Thanks!
Todd
As of late I've had some vocal issues, which I blamed on a nominal cold or virus, even though I don't have any other symptoms. It's worse in the AM, however it does impact me all day, especially when I try to sing in the evening. For the past several weeks I've been following the 16/8 intermittent fasting regimen. For those who may not know, you have a 16-hour window where you don't eat and only drink water and black coffee. No calories. Then you eat your regular day of calories in the remaining 8-hour window. Today I started wondering if my issues are related to this change in my eating schedule.
I did some quick research, and ran across a pubmed study on fasting and the male voice. The short study/result can be found here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20392525 , but in a nutshell is concludes that: "Phonatory effort was significantly greater during fasting (P < .001)...There was a significant decrease in the habitual pitch, voice turbulence index, and noise-to-harmonic ratio (P = .018, .045, and .001, respectively)." Doing additional research I found this: "The Harmonics-to-Noise (HNR) ratio is a measure of the proportion of harmonic sound to noise in the voice measured in decibels. (Ferrand, 2007). HNR quantifies the relative amount of additive noise (Awen & Frankel, 1994). The lower the HNR, the more noise in the voice....The greater the proportion of noise, the greater the perceived hoarseness, breathiness or roughness and the lower the HNR figure will be, i.e. a low HNR indicates a high level of hoarseness, and a high HNR indicates a low level of hoarseness. There is a strong relationship between how we perceive voice quality and the harmonic to noise ratio (Ferrand, 2007)." This is also described as what happens to a person's voice as they age, especially noticeable in elderly people.
Curious if you singers out there have experienced any impact on your voice based upon timing of meals/fasting. IF is not like a 24-hour+ fast, and I like what it is doing for my body and brain, but if it's responsible for my current vocal issues then I'll need to make some changes.
Kind of an obscure post, which is why I'm putting it in Off Topic.
Thanks!
Todd
