My parents have always described me as one being too loud for my own good, and have tried to encourage the act of whispering.  I have not yet mastered the concept of whispering, I somehow manage to make it sound as if I were whispering through a bullhorn, but I couldn’t help but wonder-is whispering bad for your vocal cords?

Pursuing my curiosity online, I found some information concerning whether or not whispering is bad for your voice.  Anahad O’Connor states in his article, <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/health/08really.html?_r=0″> “The Claim: Whispering Can Be Hazardous to Your Voice,” </a> that whispering “causes more trauma to the larynx than normal speech.”  Interesting.  This claim was soon contrasted with a counterargument by  Dr. Robert T. Sataloff who proclaimed that there was, and still is not, enough evidence to support this claim, that this idea is merely based on theory.  This then pursued  Dr. Sataloff to conduct his own experiment.  Completed with 100 participants, Dr. Sataloff measured the degree as to which the individual’s voices were strained when talking normally and whispering.  Turns out this experiment was the evidence needed to help substantiate that whispering may in fact put a strain on one’s vocal cords, or at least more so than when talking at a normal level.  Dr. Sataloff found that in 69 of the 100 subjects there was more of a strain placed on the vocal cords when whispering, while eighteen subjects showed no difference, and for 13, whispering was easier on their vocal cords.

The experiment completed does not solidify the argument that whispering is damaging to one’s vocal cords, but it does push the argument/concept in the right direction.  The experiment demonstrated a wide variety of results with not too incredibly large of a sample, which prevents the experiment from being as persuasive or leading towards one answer as it could have been.  More experiments concerning this idea is likely the most popular and effective way to conclude whether or not whispering is in fact harmful to one’s pipes but, pssttt…between you and me, it won’t hurt you to whisper every once in a while.