With a string of recent high profile celebrity voice losses, sore throats have emerged as possibly the most notorious minor health complaint around. But it seems that celebrities aren’t the only ones letting the side down. In fact, 1 in 18 sore throat sufferers will consult their GP, with sore throat consultations costing the NHS around £60m a year

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13672767

Adele famously disappointed fans earlier this year as throat issues forced her to reschedule her US tour.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/festivals/3661221/Adele-turns-down-gig-with-Beyonce-on-doctors-orders.html

It seems she’s not alone; sore throats have claimed many more famous voices this year:

• Lionel Richie had to pull out of his headline spot at the BBC Radio 2 Hyde Park show under doctor’s orders for a chronic sore throat.
• Kings Of Leon announced that they have been forced to cancel their entire US Tour because of lead singer Caleb Followill's "vocal issues and exhaustion."
•  Russell Brand famously disappointed fans in 2009 by cancelling three of his comedy shows due to a sore throat, explaining "I'm in bed, very confused, at the specialist's insistence."
• The Dalai Lama cancelled his lecture at the UCLA in May on strict instructions from his doctor to rest his sore throat.

As we all know, a simple cold can make you feel completely different from your usual sprightly self and apparently you’re not the only one that thinks so.  A cold, often accompanied by a sore throat, can change the way you sound to others and therefore affect the way people perceive you. 

Vocal coach Sally Hague comments “You can tell a lot about how someone is feeling by listening to their voice, whether they are relaxed and happy or feeling upset and tense. Often we don’t think about what we are hearing on a conscious level but we interpret far more from the way people speak than from the actual words they say.”

Dr Smith, expert in respiratory problems, has some expert advice that celebrities should have taken to avoid embarrassing last minute drop outs!

• Stay wrapped-up. Little hairs in our lungs and at the back of our nasal passage, called cilia, slow down in movement in the colder months. These normally waft upwards and outwards any particles that land on them.  This means that an infection, or a build up of infected mucus and particles, is not wafted up and out of the body as efficiently as it would be in the warmer weather.

• Stop smoking cigarettes. Smoke is a major irritant of the airways and will thicken mucus and prevent infected mucus from leaving the body.

• Keep away from other people. This has nothing to do with passing on the infection to someone else. In fact, by the time you have the symptoms of a sore throat your body is already fighting the infection meaning you would have been at your most infectious up to 48 hours before your symptoms appeared. Keeping away from other people when you have a sore throat is mainly about looking after yourself. It limits the chance of other ‘secondary’ infections latching on to your now weakened immune system.

• Avoid too much alcohol. Drinking heavily, in particular binge drinking, plays havoc on the respiratory process. Snoring, often brought about by a deep drink-induced sleep can dry out the throat, but more importantly interrupts the safe passage of oxygen to all the muscles in your body, including those in your throat which help to move particles out of the body efficiently and reduce the chance of an infection settling in.

• Check for allergy triggers. Other causes of inflammation of the throat are from allergic reactions, where your body is stimulating more antibodies than it needs, which results in your body trying to fight them off. Common causes are allergies to pollen or animal fur, a reaction to pollution or smoke.

 

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