The 1st Episode of my “Singer Survival Tips Series” . I am creating these for those vocalists heading out on the road or even just doing local gigs. This is one of THE BEST tips I share with all my students about staying healthy. Its the fist thing you’ll want to have in you “Survival Kit”!
Transcript:
Hi I’m Mitch Seekins – The Vocal Coach it is so nice to see everyone finally heading back out on tour and doing shows, so I decided to do this series of singer survival tips to help out. This is stuff that I share with all of my students – from the ones launching world and national tours to those beginning to do local gigs again.
It’s so very important for a vocalist to stay as healthy as possible to get through the shows. These tried and true tips will be things that I’ve picked up over my 38 years of touring and gigging and have used myself… oh and if you find these helpful please share and hit the subscribe button there’s more stuff coming
This is the beginning of April which is a season change and what comes with that are colds and flues as well as the beginning of the allergy season… yay ….you are constantly exposed to different varieties of germs wherever you go as each place has its own micro climate so to speak. The germs in New York are not the same germs that are in LA which are not the same germs in Chicago or Toronto my first tip is zinc and vitamin c. I personally have used this for years as well as my students grab a bottle of 10 or 20 milligram zinc tablets any brand will do it doesn’t have to be fancy and a bottle of at least 500 milligram time release vitamin c that is really important the time release aspect of the vitamin c allows the body to absorb the vitamin c as efficiently as possible if you slam it with too much vitamin c the body will just purge it and you don’t get the full benefit so the time release is actually really important depending on your stature more vitamin c is perfectly okay I’m six foot three and i take a thousand milligrams of time release vitamin c every day so if you’re of a smaller stature 500 milligrams will be just fine as well how to use this combination depending on your size I’m once again a big guy so i’ll take between you know 30 or 40 milligrams of zinc you really don’t need to go much higher than that if you’re smaller you can go 10 or 20 milligrams that’s totally fine but you take that once a day with the time release vitamin c and then you can use the vitamin c again later on in that day but not the zinc a good rule of thumb is when you take this take it with a little bit of food as the zinc may upset your stomach you want to take this right as you begin to feel something coming on you know that funny feeling in the throat where you start to feel like there’s something not quite right that’s when you want to do this you don’t want to leave that feeling for 8 or 10 hours or 24 hours and then try to do this you want to nail it right at the beginning. What this combination does is it kick-starts the body into producing massive amounts of white blood cells which is your immune system the white blood cells fight colds and flus and what have you and you don’t want to take this more than four days in a row because if you begin to develop the cold your body is going to be producing as many white blood cells as it can – it’s that kickstart that really gives you an edge on kicking the cold before it really takes hold. Now this doesn’t work a hundred percent of the time but you know, it works about eighty percent of the time! uh for example I began to have a cold that my son brought home from school on Tuesday it’s Saturday today and I started to feel it in my throat at about midnight so i actually got out of bed took my zinc and vitamin c went back to bed and then i took it again in the morning and then hit it with vitamin c that night and because I’m so big it’s a thousand milligrams and then i did it again on Thursday morning Friday morning I did it today is Saturday there’s no cold there through that time there was no point where I wouldn’t have been able to do a show if i had to so you might think well why don’t I just take the zinc all the time the problem with that is, is that even though it’ll say it on the bottle because their job of course, is to sell tablets, your body will get accustomed to it and it won’t provide that jump start that boost that’s so important in combating a cold when it’s trying to take hold so I don’t recommend taking it more than three or four days at a time the vitamin c like I said I take it every day vitamin c is a good supplement to take every day for immune health.
So the major takeaway of this is to know that to be a successful singer you need to have a strong and robust immune system. There you go that’s my first Singer Survival Tip! Once again if you like this and found it helpful, please share and hit that subscribe button … I have more stuff to come