Why is our voice lower when we wake up than when we go to sleep?
In: Biology
A couple reasons. TL;DR looser from not being used, more mucus slowing vibration, and you’re waking up and feeling lazy.
Unless you talk in your sleep, you weren’t really using your vocal cords for eight hours. The muscles in your throat are more relaxed, so the vocal cords aren’t going to vibrate as quickly, leading to lower pitch. Think the difference between a taught rubber band and a slack rubber band. The taught one will have a higher pitch when strummed.
Second, you haven’t been as actively removing the mucus from your throat. The lungs make a lot of the stuff, and during waking hours you end up removing a lot of it without thinking much. Also, you’re drinking water, which thins the mucus. When you sleep, you don’t remove as much mucus, and it gets a little thicker from having less water in it. To continue with the rubber bands, it’s like strumming a rubber band in water versus in air. The one in water will vibrate more slowly, and have a lower pitch.
Lastly, in the mornings, you’re tired and still waking up, and your grogginess means that you’re not putting in as much effort to speaking clearly. You see this happen when you get tired all the time, not just in the morning. Maybe if you’re in a situation where you go straight to an alerted state after waking up, you won’t experience it as much.
*taut not taught, I wrote this at 2am*
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