I think that it might be a possibility that people carrying excess weight
may not feel the need to activate their diaphragm as much to control
expiration because there is this excess weight already behaving in an
antagonistic manner. If you rapidly lose a large amount of weight, then
suddenly there will be less resistance to your lower abdominal muscles
action of expiration. This can result in what you may term a "lack of
support". You will almost certainly find that you run out of breath
quicker. You may now need to work harder on keeping your diaphragm active
to regulate your breath, otherwise your throat will do it instead and the
resulting sound won't be one that most people would try for when singing
Strauss!
Thank you Dr Messmer for pointing in this direction. I had thought that
this was a possibility in many people's description of loss of support with
weight loss, but lacked the conviction to say it until I had some idea that
people may agree with me. OK, it's not like me to be meek and humble, but
these things happen to all of us occasionally ;-)
Best wishes
Colin Reed, tenor
Newark, UK
----- Original Message -----
From: <Greypins@a...>
To: <vocalist-temporary@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 11 September 2002 18:37
Subject: Re: [vocalist] RE: losing weight and the voice
> In a message dated 9/11/2002 1:29:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jjm23@p...
> writes:
>
>
> > so I
> > suspect if one is overweight the diaphragm is more "supported" and with
> > significant weight loss, a readjustment (dare I suggest re-education of
> > "muscle memory" ;-) ) is needed to get the same support.
> >
>
> i don't know if you want to say that there is more support with
being
> fat (that would mean that fat people support better than thin people).
if
> someone loses weight gradually, there is plenty of time to adjust and, i
> would guess, that change is so slow that such adjustments might go almost
> unnoticed. i think when people who lose weight experience problems in
their
> singing that they attribute to that weight loss, is when they lose the
weight
> unhealthily. rapid weight loss will make most people weak and, in terms
of
> support, they might feel as if the chair had been pulled out from under
them.
>
> mike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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