At full strength: how to recover your voice after a match?

The European Football Championship is a competition of the continent’s best teams. It is difficult for a true fan to hold back his emotions and silently watch a bright game. The result of such support for your favorite team is a broken voice and a swollen throat. What is the right way to shout at matches to avoid hoarseness? Zinaida Bogolepova, phoniatrician, otolaryngologist of the Clinic of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery of the European Medical Center, tells us.

Why is it possible to lose your voice because of shouting?

When we shout, the vocal folds close tighter than they should be by default. If it happens once, there is nothing wrong with it, the body copes. But if a person screams for a long time, the vocal folds begin to be intensively traumatized, and especially suffer from their edges. Active blood flow to the larynx leads to swelling of the folds and expansion of blood vessels. The result is traumatic laryngitis.

Singing or shouting loudly is a special skill that must be learned. This is why opera singers and professional actors rarely lose their voice, even though they have to sing or speak a lot for long periods of time. Top tip: you should engage your diaphragm and abdominal muscles. Having mastered this technique, you can chant mottos in the stadium for a long time and painlessly for the body. But fans who want to louder to support their favorite team, mostly shout “without breath”, on the “clamp”. After this, the voice may be lost and there may be a sore throat.

How to restore a broken voice?

We sometimes do not realize how vulnerable the ligaments are. From the increased strain of the voice is lost, there is hoarseness and coughing, throat is red, swollen, it feels a sharp pain.

The first thing to do after the match is to keep quiet, stop traumatizing the vocal folds so that they recover faster. Usually a person does this intuitively. Strict vocal rest should be observed for 2-3 days.

Vocal folds are hydrophilic, that is, they love water and recover quickly when there is enough of it. Therefore, it is desirable to drink plenty of warm water, at least two liters a day. Alkaline inhalations with mineral water, for example, “Borjomi” or “Essentuki-4” will also help to restore the voice. Gas from mineral water should be released, add it to the nebulizer and carry out the procedure for 10 minutes twice a day.

In addition, it is recommended not to eat two hours before bedtime and remove from the diet of spicy, peppery and salty dishes, so as not to irritate the mucosa of the throat.

You can also consult a doctor to prescribe medications that promote recovery.

Running, walking, bicycling will help to restore the voice. This is due to the fact that with intense and prolonged shouting, the fan has an active blood flow to the vocal folds, and there is almost no outflow. Physical activity helps to increase microcirculation. In people involved in sports, the recovery process is twice as fast.