Why Does Laryngitis Make Me Sound Like A Frog?

Last Updated (Saturday, 02 April 2011 15:40) Written by Raymond Nakamura

'Tis the season to get sick. I used to think laryngitis just happened in cartoons or movies, but in the last few years, it's been happening to me more often. Maybe I raise my voice too often at my daughter, so it serves me right.

A Lot to Swallow

The larynx is the elaborate device in our throat made of cartilage and muscle, ligaments and membrane. Among other things, the larynx protects our lungs, controls our breathing and generates voiced sounds, which can be important if you're into ventriloquism.

Growing Concerns

During puberty, its one of those things that grows much more in males than in females. These changes lead to the squeaky voices of teenage boys and the more prominent Adam's apple in men, which can be helpful in identifying female impersonators.

Into the Folds

The vocal cords or folds, are two elastic bands of tissue across the trachea (windpipe), made of mucous membrane, muscle and cartilage. Not to be confused with the false vocal folds above them, which are mostly to keep things out of the trachea, not making sounds. If you don't like my illustration, check out the Body Worlds exhibit while you still can, to see the real things.

Voicing Opinions

The vocal folds are open when we breathe and make unvoiced sounds. When we make voiced sounds the flaps open and close quickly so that jets of air pass through to form vibrations in the air. The top layer of the vocal folds is loose enough to vibrate in a mucosal wave. When the vocal cords or folds are stretched more tightly, they have a higher pitch. If less air passes through, the sound is not as loud.

Real Swell

With laryngitis, the folds swell up, often in response to a virus. This affects how they vibrate and the formation of the mucosal wave (I love that phrase). The result is that I sound like a frog. Maybe I should have done a podcast to give you the full effect.

Making the Moist of It

It makes sense that you need liquids to keep the mucus flowing to protect your voice and the mucosal wave. But different sites had sometimes conflicting information on how to do this. In any case, here's three interesting things I found out I should have avoided to protect my voice:

1. Caffeine

Caffeine dehydrates. No more chai lattes.

2. Menthol

Menthol dehydrates. So much for Fisherman's Friends.

3. Whispering

Whispering puts extra strain on your vocal folds. Guess I need an ipad to write messages.

Unfortunately, I cannot actually vouch for the effectiveness of this advice, since I didn't do any of them and didn't have control throats to compare the results. I'll try them next time. I hope you don't have any reason to.

Why Does Laryngitis Make Me Sound Like A Frog?

Last Updated (Monday, 13 December 2010 13:59) Written by Raymond Nakamura

'Tis the season to get sick. I used to think laryngitis just happened in cartoons or movies, but in the last few years, it's been happening to me more often. Maybe I raise my voice too often at my daughter, so it serves me right.

A Lot to Swallow

The larynx is the elaborate device in our throat made of cartilage and muscle, ligaments and membrane. Among other things, the larynx protects our lungs, controls our breathing and generates voiced sounds, which can be important if you're into ventriloquism.

Growing Concerns

During puberty, its one of those things that grows much more in males than in females. These changes lead to the squeaky voices of teenage boys and the more prominent Adam's apple in men, which can be helpful in identifying female impersonators.

Into the Folds

The vocal cords or folds, are two elastic bands of tissue across the trachea (windpipe), made of mucous membrane, muscle and cartilage. Not to be confused with the false vocal folds above them, which are mostly to keep things out of the trachea, not making sounds. If you don't like my illustration, check out the Body Worlds exhibit while you still can, to see the real things.

Voicing Opinions

The vocal folds are open when we breathe and make unvoiced sounds. When we make voiced sounds the flaps open and close quickly so that jets of air pass through to form vibrations in the air. The top layer of the vocal folds is loose enough to vibrate in a mucosal wave. When the vocal cords or folds are stretched more tightly, they have a higher pitch. If less air passes through, the sound is not as loud.

Real Swell

With laryngitis, the folds swell up, often in response to a virus. This affects how they vibrate and the formation of the mucosal wave (I love that phrase). The result is that I sound like a frog. Maybe I should have done a podcast to give you the full effect.

Making the Moist of It

It makes sense that you need liquids to keep the mucus flowing to protect your voice and the mucosal wave. But different sites had sometimes conflicting information on how to do this. In any case, here's three interesting things I found out I should have avoided to protect my voice:

1. Caffeine

Caffeine dehydrates. No more chai lattes.

2. Menthol

Menthol dehydrates. So much for Fisherman's Friends.

3. Whispering

Whispering puts extra strain on your vocal folds. Guess I need an ipad to write messages.

Unfortunately, I cannot actually vouch for the effectiveness of this advice, since I didn't do any of them and didn't have control throats to compare the results. I'll try them next time. I hope you don't have any reason to.

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Do Pelicans Go Blind From Diving?

Last Updated (Tuesday, 30 November 2010 16:59) Written by Raymond Nakamura

I heard a man tell a vivid and detailed story about how, after spotting fish from great heights with its exceptional eyes, the Blue-Footed Pelican dives into the ocean to catch its dinner. Over time, the repeated impact of diving into the water makes the bird blind. Unable to feed any more, it eventually dies. The lesson the speaker drew from this was that we must all be prepared for our inevitable demise. OK, I'll put more in my RRSPs, but does this really happen to pelicans? He said you could look it up. So I did.

Mistaken Identity

The first problem was finding the correct bird. About eight different species of pelican exist, none of which are called the Blue-Footed Pelican. Maybe the speaker was confused with the wonderfully named Blue-footed Booby, which lives on the Galapagos Islands among other places. It is a good diver, but I did not uncover any reports of it going blind from diving.

Taking a Dive

I looked into what other kinds of pelicans dive. Turns out that the Brown Pelican is the only one that does. It occurs along the coasts of North America and beyond. Here's a video of one in action.

Myth

Most sources said that diving pelicans going blind was simply a myth. I haven't been able to figure out the origins of the story, although this article seems to propagate the story and I found someone who claimed she had seen blind pelicans in Costa Rica, but that was for an arts degree...

Reality

Pelicans can go blind because of avian botulism from diseased fish or chemical pollution. But the greatest threat to Brown Pelicans, is not going blind, it's dealing with humans. In California, the residue of pesticides in the fish they eat damages their eggs. In Florida, the major problem is getting tangled in fishing gear.

The Take Home

Brown Pelicans were actually removed from the endangered species list in 2009, but that was before the big oil spill in the Gulf. As usual, the lessons to learn from nature are more inconvenient truths.

Why Does Spinach Make My Teeth Feel Funny?

Last Updated (Wednesday, 17 November 2010 10:20) Written by Raymond Nakamura

I'm not much of a cook nor a particularly mindful eater, but the funny feeling I get from spinach has given me some food for thought. Do you know what I'm talking about? Not the grit left behind if you don't wash the leaves properly. Some have described the effect as chalky or fuzzy. 

Turning Over a New Leaf

The most common answer seems to be oxalic acid, also known as ethanedioic acid, which spinach has lots of. Other fruits and vegetables have to a lesser degree. Rhubarb leaves, however, have so much oxalic acid they are considered poisonous. It may have evolved as a way for plants to discourage animals from eating it. 

Crystal Clear?

A dentist said the residual feeling was from the oxalic acid combining with the calcium in your saliva, to form crystals of calcium oxalate. But spinach is already has lots of calcium oxalate in the leaves and saliva doesn't seem to have much. I haven't come across any direct experimental evidence to explain the feeling, so I looked for some more corroborating information.

Your Mileage May Vary

The funny teeth syndrome seems to be more associated with cooked spinach than raw, supported by my own anecdotal Facebook survey. Cooking breaks down cell walls so perhaps more oxalic acid or calcium oxalate gets out into your mouth as compared to eating fresh. Also the volume shrinks with cooking, so you would get more spinach mass in a given mouthful. 

Get Into the Kitchen

But cooking may break down oxalic acid. I wonder if calcium oxalate is more stable or even gets formed by cooking. Cooking spinach makes it more nutritious in some ways than eating it raw. I am no dietician, and I'm not going to get into the real and imagined nutritional benefits of eating spinach advocated by Popeye and others. Cooking with calcium-rich foods may also reduce the spinach effect. If anyone has any recipes that tend to reduce the spinach effect on a consistent basis, it might be interesting to see if has chemical components that alters the spinach tooth effect.

Testing, Testing

When I tried to test the spinach effect on myself, the difference between cooked and uncooked was minor. But as I said, I'm not much of a cook nor an especially subtle taster. As well, the amount of oxalic acid can differ by variety of spinach, the age of the spinach, season (doi:10.1016/S0304-4238(02)00154-1), and growing conditions. The tip of my tongue is now hurting, though I don't know if eating spinach was necessarily the cause of it. I'll let someone else test that idea on themselves.

So I'm still chewing on this one. I can't decide which explanation to swallow. But at least the next time I discover spinach in my teeth at a job interview, I'll have an excuse — I'm studying the dental effects of oxalic acid and calcium oxalate.