system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What makes our voices sound the way they do when we hit an elderly age?
gpt
There's a very kind term in medicine called "presby," and its used for all sorts of things like presbycusis, presbyphagia, and presbyphonia, but it basically just means old hearing, old swallowing, and old voice. Presbyphonia is the most common aging voice condition in which the muscles of the vocal folds begin to atrophy and no longer adduct as fully, leaving a small glottal chink in the middle when the vocal folds should be closed. This prevents the lungs from building up adequate pressure and the vocal folds from vibrating in their traditional, smooth pattern. It causes a breathy, weak voice. The tremor that happens with presbyphonia has many of the same causes (although may result from spasmodic dysphonia or essential tremor separately) with less control of the glottal wave.

Men and women also have aging changes that differ from each other with a thickening of the vocal folds in women with menopause (causing a deeper voice) and and a thinning of the vocal folds in men (causing a higher voice).

Hixon, Weismer, and Holt have a great introductory text book that examines most speech disorders through the lifecycle.