Readying Your Voice for Winter

The days are at their shortest, the air is at its driest, and the heat has been running for weeks. For anyone who depends on their voice, that shift means something. Winter brings months of cold, dry air, sealed-up indoor spaces, and the coughs and colds that move through every office and every holiday gathering.

Years ago I wrote a post about how I brace for the cold months. Much of that advice still holds. But my thinking has changed since then, in two ways. I now look at vocal health through the lens of the nervous system, and I hold my recommendations to a higher standard of evidence. Some of what I used to do has strong research behind it. Some of it turned out to be more comfort than cure. And one piece of my old advice I now want to correct outright.

TL;DR: Winter challenges the voice through dry air, allergies, and respiratory viruses, and chronic stress makes all of them harder to weather. The best-supported protections are unglamorous: enough sleep, a regulated nervous system, good hydration (including keeping the surface of the vocal folds moist), safe nasal rinsing for allergies, and the vaccines your doctor recommends. When you do get sick, honey has real evidence behind it for cough, while steam is better understood as surface hydration for the voice than as a cold remedy. And whatever you try, check it with a medical professional first, because what's available over the counter isn't automatically safe for your voice.

Why this season is hard on the voice

Dry air dries the vocal folds from the surface. The vocal folds vibrate best when they're covered by a thin layer of moisture. In a study by Mahalakshmi Sivasankar and Kimberly Fisher, healthy speakers who breathed only through the mouth for just 15 minutes needed more air pressure to start their voices and reported more vocal effort. Cold outdoor air and heated indoor air both strip that moisture, especially when we breathe through the mouth.

Cold air weakens the nose's defenses. Researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, led by Di Huang, found that the nose has its own antiviral defense. Cells lining the nose release tiny particles called extracellular vesicles that bind to and neutralize viruses. When volunteers moved from room temperature into cold air, the temperature inside their noses dropped, and at that lower temperature the vesicle response was significantly weaker. That's one biological reason colds spike in winter, beyond just spending more time indoors together.

Stress lowers your resistance. This is where the nervous system comes in. In a landmark study, Sheldon Cohen and colleagues exposed healthy volunteers to common cold viruses on purpose. The more psychological stress people reported beforehand, the more likely they were to become infected and develop a cold, in a dose-response pattern. The busiest, most pressured season of the year is also the one where our bodies can least afford it.

Check in with your team

Early winter is a good time for a vocal tune-up, ideally before the holiday rush and the height of cold and flu season. That can take some planning, because specialist appointments often book out in advance.

• A laryngologist or ENT, if you use your voice professionally or have had vocal problems before. A baseline exam while you're healthy makes it much easier to spot what's changed if something goes wrong later. This is also the moment to review your allergy medications (more on that below).
• Your voice or oral communication coach, especially if your sessions have slipped during the busy end of the year. Small habits, like a jaw that's crept back into tension or breath that's drifted up into the chest, are easier to catch early.
• Your primary care physician, to look at the instrument (it's you, you are the instrument) as a whole: your medications, your allergies, and which vaccines are recommended for you this season.

Think of it as checking in with everyone who helps keep you in good working order before you ask the most of it.

Build the foundation

Sleep like it's part of your job

It is. In a study led by Aric Prather, researchers measured people's sleep with wrist monitors for a week, then exposed them to a cold virus. Those who had been sleeping less than six hours a night were about four times as likely to develop a cold as those sleeping more than seven. Know how much sleep your body needs, and protect it, especially through the holidays when late nights pile up.

Regulate on purpose

Given what we know about stress and susceptibility, nervous system regulation isn't a luxury in winter. It's part of your immune strategy. The practices I write about here all count: slow breathing with a long exhale, short resets between conversations, movement, and time that's genuinely off. The goal isn't to never feel stress. It's to come back to baseline often enough that stress doesn't become your resting state.

Hydrate from the inside and the outside

Vocal fold hydration works on two levels. Systemic hydration, the water you drink and the water in your food, supplies the tissue from within. Surface hydration keeps the outer layer of the folds moist so they can vibrate easily. In winter, you need both.

• Drink more than you feel like drinking. Thirst cues are easy to miss when it's cold. Warm water, herbal tea, broth-based soups, and water-rich fruits and vegetables all count.
• Breathe through your nose when you can. The nose warms and humidifies the air before it reaches your larynx. Mouth breathing skips that step, which is exactly what dried out the vocal folds in the Sivasankar and Fisher study.
• Add moisture to the air you breathe. A humidifier in the bedroom, steam from a mug of hot water, or a warm shower before a big day all help the surface of the vocal folds.
• Keep your nose warm outdoors. Given what the Huang study found about cold air and nasal immunity, a scarf over your nose and mouth on very cold days does double duty: it warms the air you breathe and protects the nose's own defenses.

Keep moving

I'll confess I've never loved formal exercise. What I do love is movement that feels good, like a dance class or a walk. Winter makes the body want to hunker down. Find the kind of movement you'll actually do, and do it regularly.

Allergies don't always take the winter off

For many of us, allergies don't end with the first frost. When the windows close and we spend more time inside, indoor triggers like dust, pet dander, and mold can keep symptoms going. Managing the inflammation matters for the voice, because a congested nose pushes us toward mouth breathing, and postnasal drip invites throat clearing.

Check your medications with someone who knows voices

Most allergy medications are now available over the counter, which makes it easy to self-treat. That doesn't mean your vocal tract is on board with your choice. The University of Iowa's Voice Academy notes that antihistamines can dry the mucous membranes, and that this dryness can show up as hoarseness, voice changes, or a sore throat. Decongestants can be drying too. I'm not a doctor, so I review my allergy medications with my laryngologist rather than deciding on my own what's "safe" for my voice. I'd encourage you to do the same.

Rinse your sinuses, safely

Nasal rinsing with a neti pot or squeeze bottle remains part of my routine, and the evidence has caught up with it. A Cochrane review found that saline irrigation may reduce how severe people with allergic rhinitis rate their symptoms, with no reported adverse effects.

The essential safety rule comes from the FDA: rinse only with distilled water, sterile water, or tap water that's been boiled for three to five minutes and cooled to lukewarm. Plain tap water isn't safe for nasal rinsing, because organisms that are harmless to swallow can survive in the nasal passages and cause serious infections. Clean and dry the device after every use.

A correction on natural supports

In my earlier post I wrote about seeking out quercetin, a plant pigment found in foods like onions, apples, berries, and green tea, for its anti-inflammatory potential. Here's where the evidence actually stands. Laboratory and animal studies are promising, but a 2025 review found that only two clinical trials had tested quercetin on its own in humans. A 2025 meta-analysis of plant polyphenols more broadly, including quercetin, found some improvement in nasal allergy symptoms but rated the certainty of that evidence as low to very low.

So I still enjoy the foods that contain it, because they're good for you anyway. But I wouldn't count on them to manage allergies, and I still don't take concentrated supplements. They can interact with medications and conditions, so talk with your doctor before trying any supplement, no matter how natural it sounds.

Cold and flu season

Prevention

Talk to your doctor about vaccines. In my earlier post I was ambivalent about the flu shot. I'd write that differently today. The CDC recommends an annual flu vaccine for most people six months and older, and your doctor can tell you which vaccines make sense for you this season. A week in bed with the flu is a long time for any voice to be out of commission.

Try gargling with plain water. In a randomized trial in Japan, Kazunari Satomura and colleagues found that healthy adults who gargled with plain water several times a day developed fewer upper respiratory infections over the study period than those who kept their usual habits. It didn't reduce flu-like illness, but it's free, simple, and easy to add to your routine.

Balance warmth and fresh air. Sealed, heated spaces are comfortable, and they're also where respiratory viruses spread from person to person. I still struggle with this one. My compromise is to bundle up, scarf over my nose, and get outside air every day, rather than staying shut in where everyone's germs are circulating.

When you're already sick

The best remedies are the same as the best defenses: sleep, fluids, nourishing food, and rest. Beyond that, here's how my home remedies hold up against the research.

• Honey has real support. A systematic review led by Hibatullah Abuelgasim at Oxford found that honey improved upper respiratory symptoms, especially cough frequency and severity, compared with usual care. Most of the studies involved children, so the evidence for adults is thinner, but it's a reasonable first choice. Stir it into warm water with lemon, or into tea. (Never give honey to an infant under one year old.)
• Steam is for your voice, not your cold. A Cochrane review found no consistent evidence that inhaling heated, humidified air relieves cold symptoms. But steam does help keep the surface of the vocal folds moist, so I still use it before I need to speak or sing. Breathe from a mug or a bowl of hot water, and keep your face far enough away to avoid burns.
• Warm drinks and salt water gargles are comfort. They soothe a sore throat, and comfort matters. Just don't expect them to shorten the illness.
• Skip the whiskey in the hot toddy. Warm water, lemon, and honey do the soothing on their own.
• Don't let a cough drag on. Repeated hard coughing is rough on the vocal folds. Honey can help, and if a cough lingers, talk to your doctor.
• Rest your voice, then bring it back gently. When you return to speaking or singing, start with easy semi-occluded exercises, like humming or phonating through a straw. Ingo Titze's research shows these exercises help the vocal folds vibrate with less effort, which makes them a kind first step back.

Know when to call in a professional

My personal rule hasn't changed: if a sore throat hangs on for more than a week, or if it's genuinely painful, I see a doctor or nurse practitioner to make sure it isn't something that needs treatment. The same goes for a voice that changes suddenly, or hoarseness that just won't lift. A laryngologist can look at what's actually happening rather than leaving you to guess.

I'm a voice and communication strategist, not a physician. Everything here is meant to help you ask better questions of your own medical team, not to replace them. You know your body, and they know medicine. Use both.

Winter will ask a lot of your voice. Give it the sleep, moisture, and regulation it needs, and it will carry you through to spring.

So, your voice is on its way to being ready for the season. Next week, we get the rest of you ready.

Want help keeping your voice strong through a demanding season? Book a consultation.

Want to go deeper into how the body shapes the way we lead? Download my ebook, The Body Leads.

References

• Abuelgasim, H., Albury, C., & Lee, J. (2021). Effectiveness of honey for symptomatic relief in upper respiratory tract infections: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, 26(2), 57–64.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2026). Interim clinical considerations for the use of seasonal influenza vaccines in the United States, 2026–2027.
• Cohen, S., Tyrrell, D. A. J., & Smith, A. P. (1991). Psychological stress and susceptibility to the common cold. New England Journal of Medicine, 325(9), 606–612.
• Head, K., et al. (2018). Saline irrigation for allergic rhinitis. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
• Huang, D., Taha, M. S., Nocera, A. L., Workman, A. D., et al. (2022). Cold exposure impairs extracellular vesicle swarm–mediated nasal antiviral immunity. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
• Lai, Y.-R., et al. (2025). Clinical effects of polyphenolic compounds on allergic rhinitis: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. PMID 40618891.
• Naso, M., Trincianti, C., Tosca, M. A., & Ciprandi, G. (2025). Quercetin and its lecithin-based formulation: Potential applications for allergic diseases based on a narrative review. Nutrients, 17(9), 1476.
• Prather, A. A., Janicki-Deverts, D., Hall, M. H., & Cohen, S. (2015). Behaviorally assessed sleep and susceptibility to the common cold. Sleep, 38(9), 1353–1359.
• Satomura, K., et al. (2005). Prevention of upper respiratory tract infections by gargling: A randomized trial. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 29(4), 302–307.
• Singh, M., Singh, M., Jaiswal, N., & Chauhan, A. (2017). Heated, humidified air for the common cold. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, CD001728.
• Sivasankar, M., & Fisher, K. V. (2002). Oral breathing increases Pth and vocal effort by superficial drying of vocal fold mucosa. Journal of Voice, 16(2), 172–181.
• Titze, I. R. (2006). Voice training and therapy with a semi-occluded vocal tract: Rationale and scientific underpinnings. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(2), 448–459.
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Is rinsing your sinuses with neti pots safe?
• University of Iowa Voice Academy. Check your meds: Do they affect your voice?

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