Five tips for when you’ve lost your voice

For this simple recipe, you take 200 ml of elderflower syrup and 300 ml of organic honey and heat both in a saucepan to approximately 40 degrees Celsius. Do not boil the mixture. This preserves the ingredients’ health-promoting properties. Leave the mixture to cool, then let 1 tsp of it melt on your tongue every three hours.

Ginger, the all-rounder, also helps ease hoarseness. Either chew it slowly and swallow or enjoy it as a tea. To do so, grate a piece of ginger into hot water, let it infuse for five minutes and sweeten it with honey. Then raise a glass to your health! Don’t use candied ginger – it doesn’t have the same effect.

More effective than gargling, which only reaches your mouth and upper throat, is inhalation. The fine water droplets penetrate deeper into your respiratory tract. If you don’t have an inhaler, simply add two to three tablespoons of ribwort or sage leaves to a pot of hot water. Leave it to infuse for 20 minutes, then breathe in the warm air under a towel.

Various poultices can help against hoarseness. To make a quark poultice, spread approximately 1 cm of quark on a cotton cloth, wind the cloth around your neck and leave it on for at least an hour. For an onion poultice, cut two to three onions in rings and heat gently. Then place about a finger thickness of onion rings on a muslin, close the cloth and wrap it around your throat. To fix the muslin in place, tie a cotton cloth over it and wear it until the heat subsides. Poultices containing healing earth can also ease symptoms. To do so, mix three tablespoons of healing earth with a little water to make a paste. Spread the paste on a thin cotton cloth and tie it around your neck. Tie a woollen scarf over the cloth to increase the warming effect.

A humidifier works wonders in winter against dry air from radiators. Alternatively, you can place little bowls of water on the radiators to achieve the same effect – or leave your washing to dry indoors.