You hear a lot about honey, lemon and ginger in relation to voice difficulties (such as a sore throat for example) and I equally get asked a lot about remedies. For the sake of clarity let’s focus on drinks for now.
The likes of honey and ginger are antibacterial and so they do have properties in them that are helpful. If your voice is sick because you have a cold or flu for example, these sorts of things would be, at the very least, soothing for you. Let’s take ginger, which has known anti-inflammatory properties and so could help in terms of reducing any inflammation in your throat or at least bring you some kind of comfort. Lemon, again, has alkalisation properties as well a strong argument for its vitamin C content. The alkalisation properties could help alleviate symptoms of reflux for example. And so in that way these sorts of ingredients are nutritious and good things to have in your body.
However if there is an issue, for example, with something on your vocal cords (perhaps a paralysed vocal cord, a scar on your vocal cord, nodules or a vocal cord cyst) these sorts of ingredients are not going to cure them. I think that because people feel better after taking things like honey, lemon and ginger, they often believe (or hope) that it’s going to cure the issues surrounding their voice. Sadly I often have to break the news to clients and inform them that this isn’t the case.
Of course, should taking the likes of honey, lemon and ginger make you feel comfortable and perhaps even feel a little bit better, it might be appropriate for you to take them. However you should be aware that they are not going to actually get rid of things like pathologies or fix vocal cords which aren’t working correctly. Usually those sorts of things are fixed via a rehabilitation therapy exercise programme.