Does Menopause Affect Your Singing?
- lusciousloisjohnston
- May 23
- 4 min read
Forewarned is Forearmed.
Why you need to get menopause on your radar early.
I'm a singer. It's all I've ever really been any good at. That and helping other people with their singing. One field I am particularly experienced in is the changing voice - especially when boys’ treble voices start to change as they approach puberty. Working with ChristChurch Cathedral’s treble choristers for over 12 years, I heard subtle nuances and changes of colour, and observed microscopic shifts in the amount of air a young treble needs to utilise in order to make the vocal mechanism work at different pitches. Often, I’d start to hear these shifts months before the voice really started to exhibit obvious signs of changing.
So why have I been so completely knocked sideways by my own changing voice through menopause? Especially when it was a subtle shift with my own voice that heralded the first in what would be a cascade of shifts and changes?
My usually very limber voice was occasionally taking a bit longer to get going in the mornings, and my top Fs started to require thought and effort. Some days, they didn't get out of bed. I knew it was menopause, even as my doctor was reluctantly agreeing to test my hormone levels.
“You're too young”, she said. But the results came back, and confirmed what I knew. I was 45 and my estrogen was declining.
And I was sleepwalking. Fast forward 8 years to today, and I'm on my way to fulfil a singing engagement, having just taken a month out to work on my technique and to try to find new vocal strategies in order to keep singing professionally. Somehow, I'd managed to be convinced that being vocally a bit more lugubrious in the mornings and shooting out a few wayward top Fs was as bad as it was going to get, but the reality is that my vocal decline was so slow and steady that it went on undetected.
It's no secret that menopause brings a whole catalogue of well-documented symptoms which are baffling enough, and that it coincides with a phase in a woman’s life when we’re at our busiest. Many of us have climbed career ladders to become experts in our fields…. which inevitably brings more pressure. We may also find ourselves dealing with the decline of our parents, for example. We’re trying to perform at our peak right at the very moment we’re being overtaken by a wave of seemingly random health niggles. Sore knees, frozen shoulders, sore hips, itches, skin disorders, headaches, vision issues, digestive issues, dry eyes - all of these can easily be brushed off as “normal signs of ageing” and we’re too close to it to connect the dots. When my voice was raspy, kept catching and was unbiddable, I put it down to being more focussed on teaching and only using my full operatic voice intermittently. No wonder it isn’t responding well, I thought.
It took another symptom delivering an almighty kick below the belt (quite literally) to get me to connect the dots. The name is as ghastly as the reality, and it is as misunderstood as it is avoided as a topic of conversation whenever menopause is mentioned. We've all heard of night sweats and hot flashes, but what about Vaginal Atrophy?
I've only heard one friend use the term, and as she’s older and happily celibate, I totally missed the warning. I thought it was a simple case of “use it or lose it” and felt relieved that at least that particular sick joke didn't apply to me. But then I started noticing a whole new catalogue of symptoms. The things that were going wrong with my vocal mechanism were also starting to go wrong with my genito-urinary mechanism too.
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5606909/#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20reported%20symptoms,and%20deepening%20of%20the%20voice.) Muscular weakness and decline, discomfort, less lubrication, lugubriousness…. as I delved into the research about VA, the lightbulb went on, and the parallels were all the more painful for their obviousness.
There is a startlingly small body of research about menopause, considering it affects half the
population. There are some treatments which address the decline in estrogen and can rebalance progesterone, and even testosterone, but HRT isn't for all women. Topical estrogen cream is considered to be less risky, and can offer some relief from the symptoms of VA. As for Post Menopausal Vocal Syndrome
(https://www.nats.org/_Library/ICVT_2022_Vienna_/Bos_AH_final.pdf), there isn't a topical cream. My research has led me to several herbal treatments, and I’m hopeful that Omega-7 might help.
Fortunately, I'm in the right “field” for this, and know which vocal exercises to use, and my general vocal hygiene is good. My month of targeted exercises and vocal care paid some dividends, but I wasn't blown away by any means and ended up going down the HRT route. As I grapple with all of these symptoms, and the extremely complex and challenging emotions that go with this territory, I’ve bounced between the 2 opposite poles of feeling utterly let down by the 2 parts of my body that I most took for granted, and thinking that it is in fact myself that has let my body down.
It's like being run over by a steamroller. You thought you’d casually sidestep in plenty of time. You certainly can't say you didn't see it coming, but even as you realise it's too late, you still can't quite believe what's happening to you. If it wasn't so gut-wrenchingly brutal, it would be comical.
Lois Johnston
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