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 midlife¹.

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 rougher, 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.

These sound changes can affect the character of your voice. You may feel for example that a rougher quality in your voice may lack authority it once had, or a lower, more resonant quality to the voice may sound harsher/more forceful than it previously did.

The way your voice feels physically

• You may find that you experience a dry throat and experience rasping or coughing.
• You might experience feeling that there is a lump in your throat, or that you have trouble swallowing.
• You may also feel the need to clear your throat frequently with small coughs or grunts.

These symptoms 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.
• It may become harder to begin words or sentences clearly, with the ‘onset’, (start of a sound) feeling more effortful, or misfiring.
• You might lose volume/power in your voice, finding it hard to project your voice as loudly or clearly across a room than before.
• Your vocal tone might become duller or flatter, 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 and needs 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 cause issues for those who engage in public speaking. Professional voice users have previously described experiencing these as:

• Taking longer to process verbal instructions or questions before responding
• Losing their train of thought/‘blanking’ during public speaking events
• Feeling increased anxiety levels before public speaking events

In addition to this, during perimenopause as hormone levels fluctuate many voice users will notice vocal symptoms varying across time, with vocal stability sometimes varying on a month-to-month or even a day-to-day basis. This lack of consistency can leave voice users feeling underconfident and anxious.

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. Aim to schedule meetings that last 45 minutes as opposed to a full hour, to give you a 15-minute vocal break before your next engagement.
• 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.