Shouting support for Olympic athletes, singing along with the car radio, and lifting our voices in the church chorale are ways we express ourselves. Lifting your voice can also mean something different.

Doctors have long performed vocal cord surgery on people with vocal injuries but today, cosmetic surgery is available for people who want to sound younger. Why pay a plastic surgeon to get a nose like Halle Berry's, lips like Angelina Jolie's, and have as much fat sucked off your hips as Kirstie Ally, if Father Time assigns you a voice like Harvey Fierstein's?

To produce sound, vocal cords meet each other at a rate of between 120 and 220 times a minute, and that high level of usage exacts a price. Unlike skin, which sags as we age, the vocal cord surface stiffens.

Heavy voice usage takes its toll over the years, so let's assume women are more susceptible to voice aging than men, since we usually manage to get the last word.

Over time, air leaks through a gap in the vocal cords and a voice lift narrows the gap. Singing, smoking and everyday talking can make vocal cords less limber and speech less recognizable. So can a few stiff drinks.

For about $17,500 as the crow's feet fly, doctors insert implants through an incision in the neck, or plump the cords by injecting fat or collagen.

Dr. H. Steven Sims, Director, Chicago Institute for Voice Care, said, "For the professional voice user, a voice lift is a reasonable request. Also, for people who have weakness in the vocal folds from neurologic conditions like multiple sclerosis, augmenting the vocal folds can yield a more robust, flexible, and ultimately pleasing voice. The materials available for augmentation continue to improve, so I think this is a useful adjunct to voice rehabilitation."

Sports fans may need voice rehabilitation as well from screaming during games, a traditional emotional outlet, since it's illegal to punch referees.

It's also illegal to punch Mother Nature for handing out sagging bodies and stiff vocal cords, when we yearn for the opposite.

Dr. Steven H. Dayan, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Illinois, Chicago, said, "I feel that [voice lift] is an appropriate procedure, in limited situations, and it's imperative to seek out a well-experienced professional. If a patient wants the winning voice on 'American Idol,' this isn't the procedure for them."

Doctors can only make you sound the same as when you were younger; they cannot make you sound like Streisand.

In discussing the voice lift, Dr. Robert Thayer Sataloff, Ear, Nose and Throat Department, Philadelphia Graduate Hospital, said, "If someone can take the tremor out of your voice, that would be of value."

What's wrong with a little tremor, maybe not as pronounced as Katharine Hepburn's was, but you can tell a lot by a tremor. Emotion detection, for instance. If unemotional Scott Peterson could've managed a tremor for the jury, the verdict might've been different. And what about pre-pubescent boys with a vocal squeak alerting parents to his impending manhood? Without that squeak, who could tell?

On the other hand, the sound of age in our voices will become unimportant, if the words we say are uplifting.