Effective ways to get rid of Stammering: Exercises, Treatment, Home cures

Collection of Exercises, Speech therapy, treatment and home cure for stammering (stuttering).

Index of Contents

• What is Stammering ?
• People vulnerable to stammering
• Implications of stammering
• What causes Stammering ?
• Exercises for Stammering
• Lifestyle changes to treat Stammering
• Food for those who Stammer
• Vitamins beneficial for Stammering
• Other recommendations for Treating Stammering
• Stammering Trivia
• Stammering: Free Downloads
• Video resources: Curing Stuttering/ Stammering

What is Stammering ?
Stammering is a fairly common problem. As per an estimate; approximately 1.5% of the world population is affected by this speech disorder.

What is Stammering ?

Stammering is an involuntary interruption or inability to push a syllable or letter while speaking. This difficulty is usually encountered when speaking words beginning with or sounds produced by letters b, d, g, k, p and t. Stammering may also be accompanied by allied symptoms like a red face, tremor of the jaw and blinking of eyes when speaking.

Who are affected ?

Stammering generally occurs in childhood, between three and seven years and is perfectly acceptable. Stammering becomes a cause of concern, when it extends beyond 10 years of age. Statistically, 1 out of every 4 children who stammer, retain it up to adulthood.

It can affect members of either sex, but is more common in men than women.

Implications of stammering

Stammering is benign condition with no physical implications. Stammering in childhood (2-5 years) is normal as children develop their speech abilities in this age. This should normally disappear with age.

However, if stammering lasts longer or is left untreated, it has vital social, emotional and psychological implications.

Stammering may result in a significant loss of motivation to speak and induce a person to be silent in friend circle, school or at workplace, for fear of ridicule.

What causes stammering ? 
Physiological factors are primarily responsible for stammering in children. Children stammer due to one of the following causes:

1) Inability to control muscles of the organs of speech

2) Obstruction in the organs of speech.

3) Neuromuscular problems

4) Difficulty in the movement of the tongue and lips

However, stammering in advanced age is also attributed to psychological factors like: loss of confidence in ones ability to speak without stammering. Other psychological factors that can ‘trigger’ stammering include scorn, anxiety, arousal and tense family atmosphere.

Exercises for stammering

Exercises are effective in treatment of physiological causes of stammering. In general, exercises are meant to provide strength to the organs associated with speech including tongue, lips, jaw, trachea and lungs.

Many people who stammer have found these exercises to be beneficial in reducing the intensity and in some cases, completely curing stammering problem.

The exercises should preferably be done every night in a secluded area, before going to bed. An exercise regimen comprising of the following exercises are beneficial in treatment and cure of stammering.

Stammering Exercise #1 Loudly and clearly pronounce the vowels A, E, I, O and U. Be overly articulate and distort your face strongly, every time you utter the vowels.

Stammering Exercise #2: Open your jaws as wide as you can without exerting hard. While the jaws are still open, lift your tongue upwards to touch the roof of mouth with the tip of your tongue. While still in contact with the roof of your mouth, drag the tip of your tongue towards the back of your mouth. When your tongues get stretched to the maximum (without hurting), hold there for few seconds. Next pull out your tongue outside the mouth and stretch it downwards as if attempting to touch the chin. Hold in that position for few seconds. Repeat 4-5 times.

Stammering Exercise #3: Deep breathing exercise are very effective in curing speech disorders like stammering as they help to strengthen the respiratory organs and to relax neuromuscular tension that builds up in the body.

Stammering can be controlled by learning to voluntarily control the rhythm of words by implementation of specific breathing patterns. There can be many variants of deep breathing exercises and one can choose any or all exercises which he/she is comfortable doing. Some of the variants are:

a) Inhale deeply through mouth and exhale slowly, immediately after inhalation.

b) Inhale deeply through mouth and push your tongue outside the mouth while exhaling.
c) Inhale deeply through mouth, at the same time, press your chest muscles inward. Exhale slowly

You can have your own variations of these deep breathing exercises, as long as they provide some respiratory motion, swelling of the abdomen and workout for chest and other speech organs. Do not overdo any exercise and bring variations, every one or two minutes.

Stammering Exercise #4: Reading exercises are helpful in identification of patterns of repetition of syllables that cause stammering and thus reduce bottlenecks of fast reading. For this exercise, take a text and read it fast without laying emphasis on the quality of speech. Speedy reading will help a subconscious identification of each word. Prefer the speed to the quality of speech. Let the words be wrongly spoken and do not stop on any particular word or syllable. This exercise, if continued for 2-3 months is very effective in relaxing muscular tension and correcting all obstructions of the speech.

Stammering Exercise #5 Singing is a very effective exercise for stammering. Singing helps the sufferer learn to better control breath and the phonatory muscles. Another very effective treatment for stammering involves participation in theatrical activities. Theatre helps shed down several inhibitions and is very effective remedy for stammering.

Lifestyle Changes to Treat Stammering

Fighting inferiority complex: Developing confidence in ones own ability to speak correctly is probably the only real solution to cure stammering. However building self-confidence when one makes nervous mistakes in every sentence is not easy. Inferiority complex is natural in people who stammer. Dealing with this complex is the most paramount task in overcoming stammering. Talking openly when the person approaches with the subject is vital in handling this complex. Maintaining a relaxed environment at home gives the child an opportunity to speak without stress.

Watch out your breath: As a general thumb rule, one should breathe from the belly and not from the chest. Breathing from the belly naturally calms down and relaxes nervous and muscular tension and is a helpful habit in curing stammering and related disorders.

Family support: Family support is of vital importance in treatment of stammering. Family members should use all possible means to deliver the person of his state of anxiety which is the only cause of stammering in a large number of cases. Family members must:

• Not punish or react harshly on a person who is stammering
• Listen carefully, when such a person speaks
• Adapt to speak slowly and not interrupt when a person stammers
• Be patient and wait for the person to complete words
• Not complete sentences or words when such a person is trying to speak.

Consulting a speech therapist: Speech therapy has been used to cure or reduce the intensity of stammering. Speech therapist try to diagnose the causes of stammering and accordingly prescribe exercises, medications and/or scalpel intervention in certain cases.

In case of physiological defects, speech therapy is compulsory to treat stammering. While speech therapist mainly concentrate on speech corrections, they may also adopt psychotherapies like hypnosis, impoco, role plays or cognitive behavioral therapy, if diagnosis suggests a psychological cause for stammering. Many therapist also use acupuncture, yoga spa treatment and other relaxation techniques to assist in treatment of stammering.

Many cities have specialized speech therapy centers which offer intensive cures and therapies for stammering.

Hearing aid: There are also some hearing aids that help to reduce or eliminate stammering. The electronic device records the user’s voice using a microphone and sends it back to his ears after a delay of about split seconds or at a slightly different frequency.
Simultaneous speaking and the ability to listen to how it is heard by others is very effective in helping one who stammers correct his errors.

Though familiarization with the device may take up to a few months, they often succeed in breaking the psychological barrier that prevents normal speech. Once the barrier is broken and the practitioner gains confidence, he/she can start speaking normally without using the device.

Food for those who stammer

While there are no particular foods that can be used to cure stammering, some food are known to be beneficial for speech organs. For instance, chewing Indian gooseberry, Almonds, Black pepper, Cinnamon and dried dates are known to clear speech congestions. Thus they can be taken internally in moderate quantities to address symptoms of stammering.
Vitamins beneficial for Stammering

Should Stutterers Take Vitamin B-1?

Two studies suggest that thiamin (vitamin B-1) may reduce stuttering. One study was of children; the other study investigated adults who stutter.

The Hale Study

A 1951 study 1 investigated thiamin with a unspecified number of children.

Each child received either 30 mg of thiamin (vitamin B-1) or a placebo for one month, and then the opposite for a second month. In four cases in which a child started on thiamin, and then stuttering returned when the child went on the placebo, thiamin was given in a third month, with the results that all four of these children’s speech improved.

The study was double-blind. “In most cases follow-up observations continued beyond the two-month control period.”

Stuttering wasn’t measured. The previous article in the same issue of the journal was titled, “Measuring the Severity of Stuttering,” about ways to measure stuttering. In other words, in 1951 measuring stuttering was just beginning.

The results of the Hale study were:

1. 80% of the two- and three-year olds had “observably improved” speech.
2. 50% of the four-year-olds “were definitely improved.”
3. Little improvement was seen in the five-year-olds.
4. No improvement was seen in the seven- and eight-year-olds.
5. As noted above, four children did an ABA design study, with thiamin switching off their stuttering, stuttering returning on the placebo, and then thiamin switching off the stuttering again.
6. Except for one child, all of the children who responded to thiamine did so within two weeks.

The first four results are similar to what we now know is the spontaneous recover rate for children, that is, 80% of pre-schoolers recovery from stuttering without therapy, and after a child is about five years old spontaneous recovery becomes unlikely. I.e., the number of children who responded to thiamin was unimpressive.

The interesting results of the Hale study are in the last two: the effects were seen within two weeks of starting thiamine, and in four children thiamin appeared to switch stuttering on and off. Without treatment, most spontaneous recovery occurs 31 to 36 months (two-and-a-half to three years) after onset. The 80% spontaneous recovery rate takes five years. 2 In other words, the Hale study found that thiamin was effective for about the same number of children who would have spontaneously recovered without treatment; but thiamin speeded up recovery time from two-and-a-half to five years to two weeks. It would be interesting to investigate if the children who don’t respond to thiamin are the same children who don’t spontaneously recover from stuttering; perhaps these children have some neurological abnormality, or perhaps they don’t absorb B vitamins well?

The diminishing effect with older children could be because two- and three-year-olds typically weigh about 30 pounds; when seven- and eight-year-olds typically weigh about 60 pounds, so the older children were getting about half the dosage. I.e., the young children received about one milligram of thiamine per pound of body weight, when the older children received half a milligram per pound.

How does this study measure up to modern studies? The biggest problem is the lack of measurement of stuttering, not disclosing the number of subjects, and the lack of statistics. This doesn’t invalidate the study; rather, it limits the results to either dramatic or nothing. In contrast, a modern study of a medication can measure subtle changes in speech. Hale observed dramatic changes in the children’s speech; more accurate measurements wouldn’t have changed the results of the study.

The article also referred to an unpublished study 3 of 17 adults in which “the greatest speech improvement was observed during the periods of thiamin consumption as compared to those periods during which a placebo was administered.”

The Schwartz Study

In a recent double-blind study 4 of 38 adult male stutterers, half received 300 milligrams of vitamin B-1 (three 100 mg pills, one with each meal, plus a daily B-complex pill). The others received a placebo. Of the 19 men who received the vitamin, stuttering was “largely eliminated” in six of the men. For the other 13 men no effect was seen. The six men were then followed for seven months and “their speech has remained essentially free of stuttering.”

Adult men typically weigh about 190 pounds so these men received more than one milligram per pound of body weight, or a little more than was effective for the young children in the Hale study.

The study was rejected by Nature because it didn’t follow formal procedures for registering human subjects and because a news release with the results had been released. The study wasn’t rejected for scientific reasons. The author hasn’t submitted the study to any other journals because he is continuing the study with the men whose speech wasn’t affected, with a combination of 1000 mg thiamin, B-complex, and magnesium orotate.

Magnesium supplements were added because a study 5 that tested minerals in the blood of 53 stuttering children aged 5-12, and a control group of 22 non-stuttering children aged 6-16. Sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium were tested. The only significant difference was found in magnesium. 47% of the stuttering children were low in magnesium. One of the functions of magnesium is in metabolizing B vitamins.

How Important Is Evidence Quality?

Evidence standards can be lower for treatments that have no side effects, are inexpensive, require no time, etc. If all you have to do is pick up a $5 bottle of vitamins at the drug store, the evidence we have is good enough to recommend trying thiamine.

In contrast, medications with harmful side effects, brain surgery (yes, this has been suggested!), or lengthy, expensive therapy programs should be proven in large, high-quality studies before they are recommended.

The StutterSense Poll

An informal poll on the StutterSense blog found that of 22 stutterers who had tried thiamine, 36% said that it didn’t help, 36% said that it helped somewhat, and 27% said that they experienced a dramatic improvement in their speech.

A Double-Blind Study on Myself

A year and a half ago I tried 300 mg thiamine. My speech greatly improved within a few days. Then two months later my speech deteriorated. It wasn’t as bad as before using thiamine, but it wasn’t much better. I was disappointed that the effect had “worn off” over time. Then I remembered that I’d finished the first bottle of sixty tablets and gone to the drugstore to bought a new bottle. I looked and saw that the new bottle was 100 mg tablets! I went back to 300 mg and my fluency immediately returned. I’d done a double-blind study on myself!

Over the past year sometimes I’ve been fluent but sometimes I wasn’t. A few months ago I increased my dosage to 1200 mg and my speech improved, almost to complete fluency. I backed down the dosage to 900 mg and I started stuttering again. I then added the magnesium orotate, stayed at 900 mg, and my speech has been excellent.

A few more caveats. I dropped the magnesium supplements, and only took 60 mg magnesium in a multivitamin. After a few months my speech was pretty bad. I then started taking 140 mg magnesium citrate, plus the multi-vitamin, for a total of 200 mg magnesium. My speech improved greatly the next day, and was good for two weeks. I then added a second 140 mg magnesium citrate, for a total of 340 mg. Within a day or two my speech became very good.

Another issue is measuring B-vitamins in your blood. I did the Spectracell Laboratories 20-nutrient test, which was inexpensive. It showed that I was low on B-vitamins, when I was taking megadoses. Then my doctor told me that the Spectracell test is not reliable and she ordered expensive Mayo Clinic tests. These showed that my B-vitamins were all good or even a little high.

Safety of Thiamine

The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamin B-1 is 1.4 mg, i.e., the minimum amount needed for health. The maximum safe dosage is 7000 milligrams per day, which is more than twenty times a 300 mg dosage, or seven times a 1000 mg extreme dosage.

What Thiamine Does in the Brain

Thiamine’s role in the brain is beyond my area of expertise, but I’ll quote Paul Brocklehurst. Dr. Brocklehurst studied medicine for two years but had to drop out due to severe stuttering. Twenty-five years later he returned to university, earned a degree in speech therapy, and then in 2011 earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on stuttering. He writes:

Of particular interest is the role that thiamine plays in maintaining cerebellar function and structure. Thiamine deficiency contributes to a reduction in the number and size of Purkinje cells in parts of the cerebellar vermis (Philips et al. 1987). Thus, thiamine deficiency can lead to clinical and subclinical manifestations of ataxia (poor spatial and temporal muscle co-ordination). The most common example of this (in adults) is related to excess alcohol consumption (alcohol can lead to thiamine deficiency). Also of interest, is the fact that thiamine plays a role in the production of and enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH), which is needed for the production of myelin. Imaging studies have shown that some PWS have myelin deficiencies and/or impaired cerebellar function, so both myelin deficiency and cerebellar impairment could play a role in predisposing to stuttering.6

The following is from a paper about thiamine deficiency in alcoholics:

Thiamine is a helper molecule (i.e., a cofactor) required by three enzymes involved in two pathways of carbohydrate metabolism. Because intermediate products of these pathways are needed for the generation of other essential molecules in the cells (e.g., building blocks of proteins and DNA as well as brain chemicals), a reduction in thiamine can interfere with numerous cellular functions, leading to serious brain disorders. 7

And there’s always Wikipedia:

the nervous system is particularly sensitive to thiamine deficiency, because of its dependence on oxidative metabolism…The brain requires a much greater amount of thiamine than in other cells of the body. Much of ingested thiamine never reaches the brain because of passive diffusion and the blood brain barrier.

Other recommendations for Treating Stammering
Stammering is known to be aggravated by fatigue, anxiety or nervousness. A positive environment at home and at workplace is of paramount importance in helping a
person who stammers cure his disorder. Above all, stammering can not be cured overnight. It takes time and patience but the rewards at the end of it all are really worth the time.

Stammering Trivia

What’s common amongst Aristotle, Churchill, Darwin, Moses and Rousseau ?Ans: They all stammered!

Stammering: Free Downloads

Stammering can be cured to a large extent using simple home remedies, natural cures and exercises in most of the cases. You can download two of the most published books on self treatment of stammering below.

Self Therapy for the Stammering

Stammer No More

Tags and related search terms: Natural Home Remedies and natural home cures for the treatment of stammering. Exercises for stammering, Relaxation and deep breathing exercises to treat stammering.

Video resources: Yoga for Curing Stuttering/ Stammering