Being overweight can cause hoarseness of the voice. Research has shown that excess body weight can have significant effects on the quality and tone of the voice, as well as the individual's ability to produce clear speech and a strong voice.
On the flip side, losing weight may lighten your voice if you're a female and deepen your voice if you're a male. If you're not losing a dramatic amount of weight, likely, you won't notice a difference at all in your voice. If you were severely obese before the weight loss, you might notice more clarity in your tone.
Obesity may be associated with increased tissue bulk in the laryngeal airway, neck, and chest wall, and as such may affect vocal function.
Results: Obese individuals exhibit the following modifications in voice feature: hoarseness, murmuring, vocal instability, altered jitter and shimmer, and reduced maximum phonation times as well the presence of voice strangulation at the end of emission.
The voice of the obese becomes discreetly hoarse, breathless, and unstable. The most frequent videolaryngoscopic findings in obese patients are hyperemia and edema of vocal folds and posterior pachydermia, related to acid laryngitis, secondary to gastroesophageal reflux.
Causes of hoarseness
Bronchitis or laryngitis – Bronchitis and laryngitis are both forms of inflammation that can cause your voice to become hoarse or raspy. Cancer – A hoarse voice that lasts more than three weeks can be a sign of a more serious issue like laryngeal cancer or esophageal cancer.
Having excess fat on the body can also place weight on your diaphragm and chest cavity, which can affect how you sound and how often you need to pause to inhale when you speak. If you have a fleshy face, the fat surrounding your nose and your neck can also create differences in the way you sound.
Weight, height, and size can all affect your voice. On average, taller people have deeper voices because they have bigger vocal folds and longer vocal cords.
The amount of tissue that vibrates during phonation is related to the fundamental frequency (F 0 ) 12 and voice resonance, 6 7 and obese individuals have voice complaints related to the phonatory effort. This may strongly suggest an imbalance in the phonatory system due to fatty deposits in the vocal tract.
Spoiler: There was no magic diet fad involved. She lost weight over the course of two years by consistently lifting weights and doing circuit training. “My body has been objectified my entire career,” she said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021.
If your voice is tired, your throat feels tight, or it hurts to talk, you may have muscle tension dysphonia, or voice strain caused by muscle tightness. This common voice problem can occur even if your vocal cords are normal but the muscles in your throat are working inefficiently.
Causes include: Using your voice too much. If you talk too long, cheer too loudly, sing too much or speak in a pitch that's higher or lower than usual, you may experience hoarseness. Also, your vocal cords naturally get thin and limp with age.
Vocal atrophy is the thinning of one or both vocal muscles. This may be as a normal consequence of aging or due to a nerve injury. Additionally, some people simply have thinner vocal muscles than others, giving the picture of vocal atrophy. Vocal cords consist of many layers.
Does Losing Weight Affect Your Nose? No, your nose is not affected by weight loss. Since the nose is made of bone, cartilage, and skin, it has no fat cells. Because there are no fat cells, gaining or losing weight does not have a direct impact on the shape of your nose and the results of your rhinoplasty surgery.
Your vocal cords are muscles, and like all muscles they would eventually start to atrophy from disuse. However, if you were concerned that they would stop working altogether, you have little to fear. The muscles that control the voice also control breathing and swallowing, so they would still get some use.
People of all shapes and sizes can be healthy and good singers. Your entire body acts as your instrument when you sing, so height, stamina and body type can all play a role in how your voice sounds and functions.
Finally, the scientists found a connection between the size of man's vocal tract -- the distance between the vocal folds and the mouth -- and the attractiveness of his voice. Longer vocal tracts tend to cause different resonances in the voice that tend to be considered more attractive.
Why is my voice hoarse but my throat doesn't hurt? A hoarse voice without a sore throat can occur when a non-inflammatory condition has caused loss of vocal cord function. This can be caused by overuse like yelling or speaking in an abnormal tone for long periods of time.
Important red flags include a history of smoking, dysphagia, odynophagia or otalgia, stridor, haemoptysis and recent fevers, night sweats and unexplained weight loss. If any of these are present and the hoarseness is persistent, an urgent referral to an otorhinolaryngologist should be made.
Voice changes may occur even in the cases of mild thyroid failure since thyroid hormone receptors have been found in the larynx, which proves that the thyroid hormone acts on the laryngeal tissue [6]. Hypothyroidism can cause notable voice changes, such as low voice, roughness, reduced range, and vocal fatigue [7].
You should see your doctor if your voice has been hoarse for more than three weeks, especially if you haven't had a cold or the flu.
Certain medical conditions can affect the nerves that control the vocal cords. These can include multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, Parkinson disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Huntington disease. Nerves can also be injured from surgery or chronic inflammation of the larynx (laryngitis).