It’s happened to the best of us; We have the right words all planned and when we go to speak the only thing that comes out is a croak. But, why does this happen? Lucky for us, the team at SciShow recently investigated in order to get to the bottom of this common yet embarrassing occurrence.

According to SciShow host Michael Aranda, there are three main reasons for why your voice may crack. The first of these is puberty. Our voice comes from our larynx, a muscle in our throat surrounded by tissues called vocal folds. The position of your vocal folds determine your voice’s pitch. During puberty our vocal folds grow longer and thicken to transition from the high pitched children’s voice to the deeper adult voice. As a result of the sudden growth it's hard for our vocal folds to maintain a single pitch, and the result is voice cracking.

Read: Early Puberty Is More Common Than Ever

Though puberty may be the most common cause of voice cracking, it's not the only cause, and this phenomena can also occur in adults. In adults, however, voice cracking is most often the result of vocal cord strain, either from constant yelling or from illness.

In addition, stressful situations can also cause voices to crack. This is because being nervous causes all of our muscles to tense us, our vocal folds included. This tensing can make it difficult for our larynx to hit the right pitch. In addition, many individual forget to breath properly when they are nervous, which can also result in voice cracking.

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