blogging – The Procrastination Pen

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I have a bit of a cautionary tale which indicates that not all supplements are harmless and perhaps careful perusal of the label is required.

I’ve been reading about magnesium and discovered an article indicating that some people are low in magnesium and taking an extra supplement might work well for them in terms of resolving any sleep difficulties.

I decided to start doubling the dose. I was taking one pill per day so I resolved to take two. This worked fantastically well for about five days. I got to sleep quickly; I remained asleep all night, in fact I had trouble getting up on time in the morning. I believed I had cracked the problem, magnesium was the wonder drug and I was going to write an update for this blog about it.

On the fifth day I dragged myself out of bed and my head was swimming like a post-alcohol daze. I have had vertigo before (due to an inner ear infection). It felt exactly like that. About mid-way through the morning, I began to feel thoroughly sick. I had to go and stand in the cold air to stop myself from throwing up.

It took a while to work out what had changed. However, when I asked my favourite AI what an overdose of magnesium would do, dizziness and nausea were two of the key ones. In addition, it was a miracle that I was not suffering with diarrhoea at the same time. I checked the pills and they definitely said one only per day. For five days I had been taking double the recommended dose.

Since then, I have been off the magnesium and it shows; my sleep is broken, short and problematic just as it was before. On the upside I am not waking up feeling nauseous. Magnesium may help but an excess of it does not help more, or at least in my experience not for very long.

Hopefully this will stop someone else needing to learn the lesson the hard way as I did.

Each week I have been listening to Calm because I have a subscription to Calm and it would be rude not to. I post recommendations here on the understanding that one person in a great many may find them of use.

https://www.calm.com/app/player/nkWhJIdOC_

Daily Jay

Critical Thinking

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Do you need to rethink something, do you have to go more deeply and reframe? Do you have to think about your attitude about something and consider alternative points of view?

I often come back to Jay Shetty; he has a lot of fascinating material. But if you are in search of the best voice on Calm, I would think that maybe Tamara Levitt (assuming you have a subscription, of course)

Today’s professional ASMR is something of a bright contrast compared to the material that I am used to dealing with. The gender, the age range, the voice of this ASMR professional is somewhat different to the kind of material I have happened across of late. Let’s hope it is a positive change.

The Channel is Feel Better Now. It has 26.5k subscribers eighty-seven videos, six playlists of which this one would be on theme for the blog to date:

The video is this one:

Grandpa Gives You a Mental Health Assessment #asmr #mentalhealth #roleplayasmr

Of course it has notes; it’s from a professional ASMR artist: “236,258 views 27 Mar 2026 ✪ Members first on 27 March 2026 ASMR #asmr #relaxingasmr #lofiasmr

Grandpa Bob uses his clinical skill to relax you and reduce your anxiety, all while taking your blood pressure and checking for signs of head trauma. Paper scratching, Velcro, whispered and softly spoken words. Flashing lights, pouring water.

Please subscribe, stay up to date

/ @feelbetternow

Coffee anyone? ☕Chip in for a cup of coffee and get a personal video from me saying thanks

https://buymeacoffee.com/bobnixon48d

Be an early member of our special group, Feel Better Now! 😃😃 Sneak peeks at new videos and more

Member link: / @feelbetternow-o4t “

However, these notes are refreshingly brief compared to some we have seen.

There are a lot of comments; some are strange, some are positive, some wander off into subjects of interest only to the poster. So, normal YouTube comments then.

The video is a little under twenty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes and starts without music.

The voice of course is an elderly one but I would still say it is whispery (and not just as a result of a few decades alive). Whispery is fine, but I do prefer non-whispery videos if I can find them (they are comparatively rare). This video has a fair amount of silence in it which makes the pace actually quite lovely.

There are some non-vocal sounds, the odd click, some mouth clucking noises (ASMR artists love these). There’s the odd clunk, scribbling on paper noises, some whirring noises (from a blood pressure machine), Velcro noises from the cuff of that machine (those are a tad loud). Hissing from a fizzy water being opened and subsequently poured, fingers tapping, hands clapping together, nails clicking, paper flicking,

At intervals I did feel that I could be doing something else, which is not a great sign. That said, if you’re lying there awaiting sleep, this might be just the sort of thing. I would certainly say it was worthy of review.

Grandpa does not seem to appear in the Internet Archive (well, that I could find) and so it is on to try and find a more general ASMR video which is available outside of YouTube.

This week I happened across this one:

Bluewhisper 2020 06 08 ASMR ♥ Wellness Checkup Doctor Roleplay Gum Chewing Mxhb YtesWQ 396 MB [55ED29D7]

https://archive.org/details/bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq

https://dn721803.ca.archive.org/0/items/bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq/Bluewhisper-2020-06-08-ASMR%20%E2%99%A5%20Wellness%20Checkup%20Doctor%20Roleplay%20_%20Gum%20Chewing-mxhb_YtesWQ-396MB-%5B55ED29D7%5D.mp4

There are notes of course: “by Bluewhisper

Publication date 2020-06-08

Topics ASMR, female, roleplay

Language English

Item Size 647.1M

channel_url – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7wT_mqUvCHEIWm1cuw_T1Q

video_url – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxhb_YtesWQ

A gum chewing physical exam for you 🙂 Thanks for watching.

✨✨✨

Instagram ~ https://www.instagram.com/bluewispy/

Twitter ~ https://twitter.com/bluewispy

Goodreads ~ https://www.goodreads.com/bluewispy

Patreon ~ https://www.patreon.com/bluewhisper

Song

Night Walk – Gavin Luke

#asmr

Equipment Information 🎇

Audio recorded with Tascam DR-40X (affiliate link) – https://amzn.to/377cQ7S

Video recorded with Canon 6D Mark II with 24-105mm IS STM Lens (affiliate link) – https://amzn.to/3h5mQmI

Addeddate 2020-06-09 17:18:05

Collection_added social-media-video additional_collections_video

Identifier bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq

Scanner Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.6.4 “

This is just shy of forty-two minutes and starts with music which fortunately isn’t too energetic. The video is very quiet indeed, one of those you will probably have to elevate the volume to hear well. The quality is a bit on the hazy side (I assume it was recorded from a source online perhaps YouTube).

The voice is excellent with a spot on intonation. It does spend quite a while on the whispery side of whispery, however. There is the occasional mouth clucking sound which, as we know, are a favourite go to of the professional ASMR artist. Perhaps due to limitations of the recording there is a persistent background hiss but this is not excessively loud. However, I did not really get the point of the gum chewing – possibly it is of great appeal to someone, just not to me. The pace is lovely and slow; it is possible to feel internal systems slowing to keep pace with it.

There are clothing rustling noises, the scratching of pen on paper, the moving of equipment, the occasional tap, some glove noises (I’m not a great fan of these), there are Velcro noises, clicking noises, a blood pressure bulb sound (that is not too restful), an escaping air sound (which reminded me of a slow puncture), plastic crinkling noises, and, of course the occasional chewing noise.

Fortunately, it does not end with music. In all I would say rather a good video, and well worth a review and without the need for loud or energetic adverts.

Onto the bread and butter of this series of blog articles, the inadvertent ASMR video from YouTube. This has been the sort of video that I have consistently reviewed since this series of articles began, rather a long time ago now.

We return to a channel that has had quite a lot of attention from this blog, mainly because of the quality of the video content. However, there has been, and no doubt will be, quite a lot of music associated with such videos which is the main downside of them.

The channel is Stanford Medicine 25. This has 345k subscribers, one-hundred-and-thirty-two videos, seventeen playlists which, unsurprisingly, are all on theme for this blog (they’re all medical, it’s a medical channel).

Today’s video is:

Stanford Medicine 25 Lymph Node Exam (Part 1)

It is just under eleven minutes long, and so not very long at all, in fact. It has notes (professional YouTube videos often have notes). “281,041 views 6 Jan 2016

A video recorded many years ago showing Stanford pioneer and hematologist, Saul Rosenberg demonstrating the lymph node exam. “

So, very succinct notes indeed.

UK English persons may note the spelling of haematologist. Apologies, that is definitely what it says and I assume is the accurate United States spelling.

Comments are permitted. There is not a huge number and those that have commented are not universally complementary, which might be a bad sign for us.

As a pleasant surprise there is no introductory music with this at all. The presenter, though, is a little loud and this is one where the volume is going to need to be turned down, I think. The presenter is not introduced either by himself or as a line of text in the video. Fortunately, there are the notes with the video and a comment which states: ” Saul Rosenberg, MD, Maureen Lyles D’Ambrogio Professor Emeritus, who pioneered highly successful treatments for Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes, died Sept. 5 2022 at 95.”.

Despite the volume I think the voice is a good one. There is definitely no whispery presentation here.

The camera sweeps about in a most disconcerting manner. The best advice is not to watch but just to listen to it. The pacing is reasonable, not too rapid which is a mistake made by many video presenters. There is a monologue presentation to start with and for the first four-and-a-half minutes which seems to drag a little (some commentators have noted the “real” start which seems to indicate they are prompting people to jump forwards past this section).

The presentation quietens a tad during the examination proper. This is in keeping with the majority of such videos that I have reviewed thus far. It is still not what you would call truly quiet. The voice, though, remains calm and well-paced.

The camera still seems, at intervals, to have a life of its own, sweeping about when there appears little need for it to do so.

So, it is a reasonable one but also a rather brief one this week.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

The Stanford Medicine playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here::

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

I had been stockpiling blog articles and had built up quite a number, to the extent that for several months I simply stopped writing. There was every danger that videos would be taken down from YouTube before the article ever saw the light of day and hence any evaluation of the videos would have been a waste of time.

I am happy to report that the backlog is now so tiny that I am danger of running out of material for the blog altogether. I am sure that regular readers would be ~~delighted~~ deeply concerned in case that happened.

Perhaps this is now a good time to start bringing some changes, in order to inject a little more life into the blog, but without the drama of a revolution. To this end I thought I would review at least one video on a medical theme that comes from a professional ASMR artist. If this proves to be a popular change, perhaps I will make it permanent.

Moonlight Cottage ASMR has 1.39M subscribers at the time I am looking at the channel. Some details of Moonlight Cottage have been recorded online., So obviously Moonlight Cottage is a professional ASMR artist (and a very successful one). The channel has one hundred and twenty nine videos and so there is space there for many videos which are not on a medical theme. So far so good.

However, I have self-elected to stick to a medical theme for the moment, so I have selected the following video:

The Shelter | ASMR Sci-Fi Roleplay (medical & skin exam, soft spoken)

It is a little over half an hour and so substantial enough in length and, given it is a professional ASMR video, we are setting the standard very high in terms of review.

It starts with an ocean which is that great standby of relaxing tracks but sadly also with music… It isn’t particularly oppressive music, but I was expecting something spoken or even whispered. It is beautifully constructed in the manner of a professional film, good costumes, effects, scenery but that isn’t why we are here. What does it sound like?

There are a number of distractions in terms of triggering sounds that work for some ASMR fans but sadly not for me: rustling noises, scraping noises, beeping noises. If one of these is your trigger then fill your boots.

As expected, the person participating has an excellent voice and is exactly the correct tone. I am guessing if this was not the case then 1.39M subscribers would be subscribing elsewhere.

However (and no doubt due to the science fiction theme) there are a number of less welcome noises as well. Clicks, beeps and whirring noises crop up sufficiently often to be distracting. There is also a constant background hum as if the video was shot in an area with air conditioning, but I suspect was added to improve the perception of the video being shot inside of a spaceship or similar. Usually I hope to get videos entirely without such background noises but I can see why it was done in this case. There are clunks from equipment, and further sounds from it being dragged – the sort of noises I have avoided in inadvertent ASMR videos.

The tail end of the video contains no speech at all, but more of the beeps, sliding noises, background air conditioning noises i.e. the parts that were less impressive about the rest of the video.

All that said, the bar was set very high, precisely because this is a professional ASMR video and I do think you could do worse than listen to the video for yourself. I’ll add it to the Sweetie Jar list which currently is the only one I have for such professional videos.

That may change if this aspect of the blog proves to be more popular.

So, now we have dispensed with the additional extra video, what about the meat and potatoes of this blog i.e. an inadvertent ASMR video.

Today’s video comes from a site which regular readers will well recognise:

University of Leicester

So it must have something going for it.

The video is this one:

Cardiovascular Examination – Demonstration

It is only five- and three-quarter minutes long and has a little of the straight-to-video quality about it. The patient is Mr Jackson. The notes tell us something about the participants “Presented by Dr Adrian Stanley PhD FRCP Consultant in Cardiovascular Medicine. Produced and Directed by Dr Irene Peat FRCR FRCP, Dr Nicholas Port MBChB BSc and Jon Shears.”

Fortunately for us Dr Stanley has a great voice. The video is not hampered by startup music but it is by the constant background noise, presumably from air conditioning. The pace is good rather than excellent. But it is quite relaxing, I think.

This forms part of the Clinical Examinations playlist which is ten videos long – perhaps a little long for us today.

However, the University of Leicester does have another Cardiovascular based video worth examining, which is this one:

Cardiovascular Examination – Explanation

This one is nearly thirteen minutes long and shares many of the attributes of the last one, only more so, obviously. There are a few more noises as Mr Jackson gets to undress at the beginning, but Dr Stanley still has a great voice and in this longer video the pace seems much more measured (that might purely be personal perception). There are heart sounds included in this one but these are not excessively loud or off-putting.

The University of Leicester Playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here: