What Happens Inside the Larynx When You Talk for Hours
The vocal cords are two small mucous-membrane folds stretched across the larynx. When you speak, they vibrate together at roughly 100 to 300 times per second. A teacher delivering six periods a day, or a call centre agent on back-to-back calls across an eight-hour shift, asks those folds to sustain that collision rate for hours without adequate rest. The result is phonotrauma, micro-tears in the mucosal lining that cause swelling, stiffness, and the characteristic roughness of a strained voice.
