Sing for Hormonal Therapy

It could help save your voice

(HealthScoutNews) -- While the debate over estrogen therapy for postmenopausal women continues, a new voice now enters the "just do it" side.

A French-language journal, whose title translates to Contraception, Fertility and Sexuality, recommends that women singers give serious consideration to taking estrogen. The hormone replacement therapy probably will prevent "postmenopausal voice syndrome."

The syndrome seems to affect 17 percent of postmenopausal women. It causes loss of voice intensity, fatigue and a narrowing of the singing register. Even after the syndrome starts to appear, proper treatment with estrogens and vitamins can reverse the effects, and both the singing and speaking voices recover.

The authors explain that the reason so few women are affected by this syndrome is that the effects of the androgens, the male hormones, that appear after menopause, aren't always predictable. In some women, the androgenic hormones change the muscles and vocal cords, and cause voice changes. But in other women, the androgens seem to be converted into estrogens, and their voices never change.

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