Emily F. OB 20

Emily F. OB 20: The voice is so delicate and so many things can go wrong, but there is always hope with proper care and therapy. Healthy phonation can prevent or treat many voice problems. Functional disorders include hyperfunction and hypofunction, both of which have long lists of causes. Most of these can be helped by healthy vocalization. If continued, functional disorders can develop into laryngitis, edema, polyps, nodules, dysphonia plicae ventricularis, contact ulcers, or myasthenia larynis. Serious problems like these need the attention of a doctor. So many things affect the voice: hormonal fluctuations, smoking, prescription and over the counter drugs, alcohol, allergies, hydration or lack thereof. It's important to know what healthy and wise voice use means. "Never compensate. It is better to do too little than to do too much."
Key concept; Taking care of the voice is a big job that includes taking good care of the whole body and being smart with voice use. 
Key terms: hyperfunction, hypofunction, functional pathologies, chronic laryngitis, edema, polyps, nodules, dysphonia plicae ventricularis, contact granuloma, myasthenia laryngis, ruptured vocal folds, nasality, hoarseness
Making connections: Reading about all these problems makes me a little afraid to speak or sing at all! I know my voice is pretty resilient, though, because I've worked it hard a lot of times and not had too many problems, but I know I can't rely on that forever. I want to take good care of my voice! Most of my problems seem to be hyperfunction related. The biggest one that jumped out at me was imitation of poor voice models. I've imitated my whole life. I also recognize a bunch of other things that I do on that list.