Ice, Ice Water and Your Voice! You Have To Hear This!

I know, I know! I’ve heard this for as long as I can remember! Do not, for any reason, under any circumstances, dare to even think, as a singer, to drink any cold drinks, ever! And especially not iced! Why? And this is not rhetorical, I really wanted to know why? Well, they say it will constrict your vocal cords! But, that’s it! That’s it! That is all they say. Ok. Is that it? Is there more? What does that really mean? Constrict your vocal cords. Is that really so bad? I mean really? That’s all they say, whoever “they” is.

They say it will constrict your vocal cords but they don’t say you will lose your voice! They don’t say you will choke or stop breathing, or speak, all of a sudden, like you just sucked helium or die! So, please, let’s think about this! Who came up with this? Who is “they” anyway? And is it just possible this could be a myth or a wives tale or an overstatement or just that “they” could be wrong?

I have been studying this for over 18 years and I want to tell you what I know is true about the invaluable healing properties of ice and ice water on your vocal cords!

I have two sons that are professional athletes, one a baseball player and the other volleyball. When my baseball player was about 11, he began to take pitching seriously and after (and I realize I am saying after) each pitching session or game, the coaches would ice his elbow and or shoulder to promote healing and proper maintenance of the joints and tissues. About the same time, I was singing four to seven nights a week in nightclubs and various other engagements. My voice was having to compete with loud amplifiers, drums, jukeboxes, loud conversation, etc. It was taking it’s toll and my voice was very tired and often times hoarse. I would lose some range and even experience severe laryngitis. I began to wonder if icing my vocal cords and throat would promote healing for me as well.

It was explained to me that in order to preserve my son’s pitching arm, it was imperative that he keep the inflammation down in the tissues surrounding the joints after pitching so that blood did not “pool” and impede proper circulation. You see, our body has a slight flaw in it’s attempt to heal through the rushing of the white blood cells to an injured or stressed area in that, at times, it let’s too much blood into the affected area. It becomes stagnant when it becomes swollen and doesn’t continue to allow new blood to flow while, in addition, the dramatic swelling impedes the joint from moving and so also prevents new blood flow in that way.

Curt Schilling quote: “When you pitch, you break down your muscles and the tissue in your body and you bleed internally, it’s normal. But what the ice does is, it slows that down and then your body starts to recover.”

In the very same way, the vocal cords and surrounding tissues swell as you sing by the very fact that you are using them abundantly. Any time you exercise or just even flex your muscles, they bulk up, and that includes the vocal cords. It happens and it is normal. However, if you are really taxing your voice by singing for many hours or singing too loudly, or singing improperly for effect or because you are not trained properly, or speaking too much for too long, or if you have gone to the local amusement park and screamed on the roller coasters, you are breaking down the tissues involved in the vocal mechanism and they start to bleed and swell just like any other muscle in the body! YOU DO NOT WANT YOUR VOCAL CORDS TO SWELL! In order to keep those cords healthy and vibrating properly, you want to keep them from swelling or vibrating abnormally because they are swollen.

So that you can reduce your recovery time and avoid having your vocal cords feel stressed at all, you want to drink ice water to keep your cords COOL, MOIST and SHRUNK at all times! By sipping ice water, you are not actually “icing” your vocal cords. (That technique is used AFTER you are all done singing or talking for a while and you can actually repair damaged cords, which I’ll talk about a bit later.) By the time the ice water passes your warm lips, slides down your warm tongue, you swallow, and let a few seconds go by, the ice water is just very cool and simply keeps the temperature down on the cords and surrounding tissue, again, keeping your vocal cords cool, moist and shrunk! It tastes and feels fantastic and your voice stays fresh! Most importantly, your vocal cords stay the same size and shape they are intended to be in order to vibrate correctly and produce the desired sounds without overcompensating for swollen cords.

This is information every singer and speaker needs to have to keep their voice healthy and fresh as well as feeling and sounding terrific! Adele, David Archuletta, Kelly Clarkson, John Mayer, Miranda Lambert, Nicki Minaj, all have different reasons for voice loss, however, each one of them could have benefited greatly with the regime of sipping ice water during their performances and icing after their shows!

Let me say this: Not one of my students has EVER lost their voice since working with me due to overuse from singing! I work my students very hard, especially those that are willing to train to increase their full chest belt, moving through passagio and those that are pushing their voices at the top of their ranges and singing for long periods of time in performance. I encourage very strongly that they do not go without their ice water regime and they thank me for it time and time again!

Let’s see, Ice Water and Icing the vocal cords VS a pharmaceutical for acid reflux or swelling due to allergy, or Botox Injections, or NO TALKING OR SINGING FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME, or SURGERY, laser or otherwise, to remove polyps or nodes or to cauterize broken blood vessels.
You don’t want your vocal cords to bleed, which can happen if you rupture a blood vessel. You don’t want to even come close, which can happen if you’re straining your cords. What do you do when you get a bloody nose? You put ice on it. Unfortunately, you don’t know if for sure you have taxed your cords to that extent, but it’s possible if your singing hard and so many singers do! Ice water is a precious, priceless preventive medicine!

COULD IT BE A MYTH? Because we have a whole Country full of people pulling in to drive through restaurants or running into 7-Eleven to grab a 64 ounce Big Gulp to get an iced drink of some kind on a daily basis and we don’t have a whole Country full of people with vocal maladies! It could be quite the opposite! With as much conversation as working people and busy people have during each day, couldn’t it be that it is their iced cold drinks that may be just what has been keeping their voices comfortable through all that talking! Really, who isn’t grabbing for a bubbly, iced drink? Is it the bubbles or the syrupy flavoring that’s soothing the throat with each swallow, or could it really be the fact that THE LIQUID IS ICED!

Ice Water in the Hospital, More Dispelling the MYTH:

Have you ever stayed in the hospital or visited someone in the hospital? Well, what do patients crave and what do the nurses hand every single patient in every room, but a great big pitcher of ICE WATER! Do you really think that if ice water was so damaging to one’s vocal cords that every hospital in America would be serving their patients pitchers of ice water?

And what’s more, if you are recovering from a surgery that required a breathing tube to go between the vocal cords and into the trachea, there is a very good chance that your cords may have been irritated, scratched or worse! That ice water is just what the doctor SHOULD have ordered to help in the healing of those sensitive vocal cords. Lucky for everyone, the therapy is being administered and they don’t even know it…yet!

No one has a problem with hot! My friends, I don’t understand! Hot is not good for swollen anything! And it is not good for swollen vocal cords! If you have laryngitis, your vocal cords are swollen! Why would you put heat on them? For those sore, swollen, tired vocal cords, have a hot tea with some abrasive lemon or gargle hot salt water or have a brandy or a shot of whiskey, but good lord, don’t have a glass of ice water! Note the heavy sarcasm here!!

On the American Idol panel what do you see in front of each of them but big red publicity cups of Coca Cola! What’s in them, I don’t really know, but my guess, my bet, is that it is something ice cold and refreshing! No one has ever campaigned against ICE COLD BEER in a singers hand between songs and I know it feels awesome and soothing on the vocal cords as it’s goin’ down! I’ll bet night after night for hundreds of years, entertainers on stage have had ice cold drinks by their sides, whether it’s an ice cold Seven Up or an ice cold Seven and Seven, or an icy martini. Oops, they must have forgotten about the rule! Joe Sun (Can’t Hold a Candle to You) famous for mason jars of ice cold ice tea! My educated guess is that it was the iced water that saved him from the effects of the caffeine in the tea.

“Most (more than 90%) of the singers I record here are professionals in the sense that they make a living in the studio as session singers, and their drink choices are as varied as the artist’s are. SOME DRINK ICE COLD BOTTLED WATER, some drink coffee, with or without cream and sugar. Some come in with one of those 64 ounce sodas from the convenience store and some drink the juices that I keep in the fridge. I don’t think that it’s really an issue for those that do it every day, at least not from my perspective.” Dave Martin, DMA, Inc. Nashville, TN

Three out of four of the drinks this professional engineer noticed were cold if not iced and the number one choice he recalled was ICE COLD WATER!
I personally don’t recommend harsh agents of any kind as a general rule. If your vocal cords are tender, strained, sore, swollen, etc., I do not believe it is good to introduce any harsh agent to the vulnerable tissue trying to heal itself. If you had an open scratch, would you put lemon in it? Or salt? Or cayenne pepper or vinager or whiskey? Ok, maybe you would, if that was the only thing you had to disinfect them

All sports trainers know the healing properties of ice on muscle, tendon, ligaments, and other connective tissue. However, we don’t have the luxury of wrapping our vocal cords to keep them from swelling again after icing. It is ultimately important to keep your vocal cords as close to normal in size and shape while working them so hard. Whether you are in concert singing for hours over loud instruments or talking non-stop over a classroom full of students or on the campaign trail speaking to thousands, forgetting you have a microphone, you can keep your cords comfortable by merely sipping ice water.

Our vocal cords swell when singing. Just like working out in the gym, our muscles swell and the veins pop out. As singers, we do not want that to happen to our vocal cords or the surrounding tissues of the larynx. Mostly, we want to keep the vocal cords COOL, MOIST, and SHRUNK, so they are able to continue to vibrate just the way they are meant to vibrate.

It is true that we are buying in to out dated information! Singers, prove me right! Come On! Let’s Do This Thing! This is a God given gift.

This is an article from Dr. Chris Burk in Great Falls regarding an outbreak of croup in children. The danger is that the trachea swells and breathing becomes labored. One remedy is to put the child in a bathroom of hot steam and then out in to the cold air as the cold air reduces swelling! It goes on to say that so do cold liquids!

“Turn the bathroom into a steam room by running hot water from the shower. Let your child breathe in the warm, moist air, then go out into the hallway or outside for a breath of cool air. This acts as an ice pack on the swollen vocal cords.”

Warm fluids help to soothe the throat, but cool liquids help to reduce inflammation.
http://www.krtv.com/news/outbreak-of-croup-in-great-falls-reported/

Here is one more thought on the benefits of drinking ice water: it speeds up your metabolism and gives you more energy while it helps in burning calories! Sounds good to me! Enjoy this reading. http://yourlifetube.com/fact-or-fiction-the-impact-of-water-on-your-metabolism/

Really? You think drinking a little ice water is going to mangle your vocal cords?! Let take Steven Tyler for an example of how to mangle your vocal cords. Yet, he was tested and scoped by laryngeal specialists during a full concert and the result was his vocal cords were more pliable after the wear and tear of the concert on his voice than when he started. My point is that our cords are, in general, more resilient than we give them credit for and a little cold water while singing is not going to impede them, constrict them, or stiffen them up to the point of inability to vibrate normally. However, if your cords are not quite so resilient, ice water could be just the thing to keep them from getting into trouble!

Once again, It is true that people are buying in to out dated information! Remember people once believed our world was flat! Ha!

Singers, prove me right! You’ll love me for it and You’ll Love Your Voice!