How often do you pay attention to your own voice? Probably not regularly. But changes in one’s voice can often be the first sign of something more serious.
A human voice is complex. Speaking, singing, and making other sounds require many parts of your body to work together. Your brain thinks of ideas. Your lungs move air in and out. Your vocal cords vibrate. Your mouth and nose help shape sound.
“Our whole body participates in the production of voice, speech, and breathing. So, we can get a lot of information about our health from them,” says Dr. Yael Bensoussan, a voice researcher at the University of South Florida.
Many conditions can impact the various body parts involved in sound production. These include depression, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, lung problems, and even cancer. Measuring voice, speech, and breathing patterns could help diagnose health problems.
Talk with your doctor if you notice changes in your voice, speech, or breath lasting over a few weeks:
- Hoarseness or a raspy quality to your voice.
- Changes in the pitch of your voice (how low or high it is).
- Your throat feeling raw, achy, or strained.
- Difficulty talking.
- Repeatedly feeling the need to clear your throat.
- A cough that doesn’t go away.
- Problems thinking of the words you want to use or putting words in the right order.
“Voice, speech, and breathing are easy to access, inexpensive, and non-invasive to measure,” Bensoussan says. “For example, for a test for lung function, you currently have to go to a hospital and blow into a machine. Then you need someone to analyze that test. Just recording your voice or breathing sounds on your phone would be a lot cheaper and easier.”
Speech pattern analysis has shown promise for diagnosing impairments in memory or thinking abilities, and mental health conditions like depression. The way people speak, the tone of voice, and even the words used can all change when someone develops depression, explains Dr. Gari Clifford, a biomedical engineer at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Clifford’s team is trying to use speech patterns and facial expression changes to catch depression early in people with dementia. This could help doctors see the effects of depression treatments in real time and change them quickly if needed. It could also provide early warning that someone’s health is declining.
Bensoussan’s team is building the world’s largest collection of voice and speech samples related to health information. They’re including people from a wide range of backgrounds and health conditions. They hope this will aid researchers in building new tools for diagnosis.
You can’t yet talk into your phone and get a full health report. But Bensoussan encourages people to pay attention to changes in their voice and speech. “If you have a voice change for more than two to three weeks, it may indicate an issue with your health,” she says.
Source: https://newsinhealth.nih.gov
