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New study into hormones' effect on the female voice

Posted on 21 February 2006

Researchers at the Universities of Sheffield and York are launching an investigation into the way hormones affect voice quality and how their influence could be controlled. The research team are looking for actresses, female teachers, broadcasters, and vocalists to take part in the study, which will aim to establish how to avoid the known problems of vocal hoarseness, severe vocal fatigue, and voice loss during critical phases of a woman's menstrual cycle.

The research team includes academics from the Music Department, the Academic Unit of Reproductive and Developmental Medicine, and the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield, and the Department of Electronics at the University of York. The study will investigate how sexual hormones can cause changes to women's voices at different times in their menstrual cycles, in the same way that the production of sexual hormones during puberty changes both boys' and girls' voices.

Tracking the detail of how vocal folds vibrate is the basic approach adopted in this work

Professor David Howard

This new study will also look into what influence an oral contraceptive pill has on the vocal quality of professional female voice users throughout the menstrual cycle. Initial results of an earlier study by the same research team indicated that a particular combined contraceptive pill could help to improve female opera singers' performances. It not only reduced the fluctuations in sexual hormones often responsible for voice problems during the natural menstrual cycle (leading to hoarseness, fatigue and voice loss), but also seems to have eliminated water retention and stabilised the quality of the voice.

Now, funding from the White Rose University Consortium's Capacity Building Grant scheme is helping the research team to explore the impact of the oral contraceptive pill on other professional voice users, such as female teachers, actresses, TV/radio presenters, and singers of other genres (jazz and musical theatre).

Dr Filipa Lä, a Research Fellow, in Sheffield's Department of Music said: "We want to raise awareness among female professional voice users of the effects of sexual hormones on their working capacities, and how to prevent possible long-term voice damage. We are interested in contacting women who use their voices professionally and who have noticed vocal changes related to their menstrual cycle."

Professor David Howard, of the University of York's Department of Electronics, added: "Our voice production mechanism is essentially invisible and it is only fairly recently that we have had the ability to analyse what is actually happening in some detail. Tracking the detail of how vocal folds vibrate is the basic approach adopted in this work, and it has served to confirm the conclusions in relation to this contraceptive pill."