Dosage dependent effect of high-resistance straw exercise in dysphonic and non-dysphonic women.

PURPOSE: to study the dosage dependent effect of high-resistance straw exercise in women with behavioral dysphonia and in vocally healthy women.

METHODS

25 dysphonic women (DG), with average age of 35 years (SD = 10.5) and 30 vocally healthy women (VHG), with average age of 31.6 years (SD = 10.3). The participants produced a continuous sound into a thin high-resistance straw for seven minutes, being interrupted after the first, third, fifth and seventh minute. At each interval, speech samples were recorded (sustained vowel and counting up to 20) and subsequently acoustically analyzed. Each participant reported the effort necessary to perform exercise and to speak, indicating their ratings on visual analog scales (VAS).

RESULTS

with regard to the DG, the exercise caused positive vocal changes, especially between the third and fifth minute: less phonatory effort, increase in MPT, and reduction of F0 variability; these voice parameters deteriorated after five minutes. This fact associated with the increased effort to perform the exercise indicates a possible overload of the phonatory system. As to the VHG, MPT improved after one minute of exercise, while the other parameters did not change over time, probably due to the fact that the voices were not deviant; seven minutes did not seem to impose an overload in this population.

CONCLUSION

positive vocal changes were observed with the high-resistance straw exercise; however, there are dosage restrictions, especially for dysphonic women.