Fasting Makes Women Talk Less

There's very little that can make women stop talking - except perhaps for fasting. A new study by Lebanese speech researchers has found that the longer a woman fasts, the less

There's very little that can make women stop talking - except perhaps for fasting.

A new study by Lebanese speech researchers has found that the longer a woman fasts, the less she tends to talk.

The study was conducted on 28 healthy women during the period of Ramadan by researchers Abdul-Latif Hamdan, Abla Sibai and Charcel Rameh of American University of Beirut.

As a part of the study the researchers acoustically analyzed the voices of the women and inspected their larynxes by video-endostroboscopy.

The women were then asked to describe how easy or difficult it was to speak.

Of the 28 women, 23 reported that it harder to speak while fasting. About half of volunteers said that they had vocal fatigue, a condition that also reduces the amount they said.

The other most common symptom that one-fifth of the fasting women reported was a lowering of the voice, with a few also showing a harshening of their voices.

Based on the results the researchers concluded, "fasting affects voice".

The main reason for this the researchers say, is dehydration. Since Ramadan fasting includes refraining from liquids as well as food, the larynxes tend to dry up leading to inability to speak much.

"(The study) supports what we as voice therapists constantly try and do - that is to get our clients to drink more water!" Discovery News quoted Scott Jackson, a speech-language pathologist at Northbay Medical Center in Fairfield, Calif. and instructor at California State University-Sacramento, as saying.

"I think that the effect of fasting on the voice is more a result of dehydration than anything else. I see a lot of professional voice users (including singers and actors) who need constant reminding to drink water," he added.

Source-ANI
JAY/M