Your musical director or chorale director is the one to turn to for advices regarding this but it should also fall on you the responsibility of keeping your body healthy as well as your vocal tract. You can have a great amount of knowledge about singing and singing programs form singorama singing lessons.
One of the most important factors to keeping the body healthy is diet and exercise. Whereas the only thing prohibited in exercise is lifting extreme weights that may damage the vocal folds, the diet is a little trickier. Here are some foods that you should avoid if you want to keep your vocal tract healthy.
First of all, drink a lot of water for this will hydrate not only your body but your vocal tract as well. With hydration, you will find that you would make easy time trying to reach those high notes and holding them. If your throat is dry, not only will you fail in reaching the high notes, but you won’t be able to hold it or even maintain the key. On top of that, you can permanently injure your vocal chords.
And then there is the food that you need to eat. Here is a list of foods to avoid if you want to maintain your voice:
• Salty foods
• Foods with refined sugars
• Spicy foods like Mexican, Tex-Mex, Szechuan Chinese foods, Indian Food, spicy Thai food, and many more.
• Any food eaten in excess is not good
• Drinking alcohol laden foods or as drinks with the food served.
• Caffeinated foods and drinks
• Artificially sweetened beverages (watch out for this ingredient: high fructose corn sugar. These are commonly found in Coke, Gatorade, and other flavored drinks)
• Chocolates
• High fiber fruits like mangoes (the fibers make the throat itchy in some individuals and this has a high amount of sugars)
Now, why the worry with the type of foods eaten? When it comes to spicy foods, the ingredients can cause physical damage to the throat. In the case of alcohol, caffeine and artificially sweetened foods and drinks, these can cause a hoarseness deep in the larynx and can dry the throat. Not to mention the fact that these can also cause the body to lose water and get dehydrated. Caffeine especially is a known diuretic and can dehydrate the body extensively especially when singing.