People & Organisational Development

Menopausal Voice Change

This guide covers what to expect and how to navigate change as a professional voice user experiencing (peri) menopause or hormonal changes.

As a professional voice user, changes to vocal stamina, power, or how your voice sounds can have a career altering effect. Hormones affect the voice throughout life, causing changes to how the voice sounds and feels during puberty, pregnancy, menstruation, perimenopause and post-menopause. The proportion of us who will experience vocal change during perimenopause and post-menopause is hard to determine, but it is estimated that over two-thirds of female professional voice users will notice significant change to their voice around midlife.

Menopausal vocal change can be unsettling, but is also an excellent opportunity to tune into your voice and how it sounds and feels. Many voice users feel that, after adjusting their working environment to support the demands made on their voice, and engaging in some upskilling and voice work, they gain more control over how they sound and present themselves. This can be an empowering and enjoyable process.

Symptoms

Symptoms vary widely from person to person, but generally fall under 4 categories:

The way your voice sounds

• You may find that your voice becomes breathier, making it harder to project your voice as loudly as you have done previously.
• You may find that the pitch of your voice lowers, making it harder to access the higher range of the voice. This can make it harder to vary intonation for emphasis in speech.

The way your voice feels physically

• You may find that you experience a dry throat and experience rasping or coughing.
• You may experience swelling in your vocal folds, feeling that there is a lump in your throat or that you feel the need to clear your throat frequently.

Either of these experiences may lead to carrying excess tension in your vocal apparatus causing pain and/or vocal fatigue.

Controlling your voice

• You may have difficulty with unpredictable vocal sounds such as yodels when you begin speaking.
• You may also lose volume/power in your voice, and/or produce a duller, flatter vocal tone, reducing the variety of sounds and colours you can employ when speaking.

Vocal fitness and stamina

• You may find that your vocal stamina is reduced, leaving you vocally tired after shorter periods of speaking time.
• You may also find it harder to sustain long sentences, and need to take breaths more often that you used to when speaking.
• You may find that your voice takes longer to warm-up than it did previously.

 

 

Cognitive and Emotional Effects

Many professional voice users also find that the cognitive and emotional effects of menopausal change affect their relationship with their voice. Our voice is part of our identity and how we express our wants, needs and how we present ourselves to others. Changes to the way our voice sounds or feels can leave us feeling self-conscious, and can be challenging for those who have to present publicly. Anxiety, low mood, and slower cognition/brain fog are all commonly associated with menopause and can also cause issues for those who engage in public speaking.

Support you can ask for

There are a number of steps you can take and adjustments you can ask for to support your voice use during menopausal change.

• Amplification – Request a microphone if you are required to speak in a large room or to otherwise project your voice. If a microphone is made available to you when engaging in public speaking, make sure to use it in order to avoid shouting and strenuous voice use.

For information on Audio / Visual Services at the university visit Audio Visual Services

• Vocal rest breaks – Request breaks between lectures, meetings or other vocally demanding engagements to avoid over-using and tiring your vocal apparatus.
• Voice training – Healthy voice use is a skill that can be learned. Request a training session for your workplace from a vocal coach, with a focus on vocal hygiene and sustainable vocal use practices.