Tag: Clinical Examinations

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:

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.

Picture DeepAI.org

Sleeping With ASMR

Recently, as happens in everyone’s life, things have been stressful. Habitually in the past, this would mean that I would achieve substantially less sleep. However, the addition of some Bose QuietComfort headphones (a company with which I am affiliated in no sense) and the Procrastination Pen playlist has really helped in this respect. The sleep isn’t super refreshing, don’t get me wrong, but there is at least more of it than I might have expected in similar circumstances in the past.

I hope that you find the playlist is helpful in your pursuit of sleep, no matter the headphones that you choose to employ to listen to it.

Today is another one from an old favourite channel which regular readers will instantly recognise. I also think, if anything, this video is superior in terms of restfulness than the last video I featured for this particular channel.

The video is this one:

Examination of the Cranial Nerves – Demonstration

At just over seven minutes it’s not huge in length and the comments lead me to suspect that the ASMR community has thoroughly taken to this one, adopted it and gone out for walks with it in the park on Sundays.

As a professionally produced video it, of course, has notes and the notes in this case are very helpful:

“13 Dec 2011 Clinical Examinations

A second more detailed video can be found at; http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/msce…

This is a real-time demonstration illustrating technique and patient interaction involved in the Examination of the Cranial Nerves.

The film was produced by practising clinicians to aid the teaching of clinical examination skills. It starts at the point when the clinician has finished taking the medical history and begins the clinical examination.

Presented by Dr Richard Abbott MD FRCP Consultant Neurologist. Produced and Directed by Dr Irene Peat FRCR FRCP, Dr Nicholas Port MBChB BSc and Jon Shears.

More Clinical Examination materials can be found at; http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/msce…”

The video starts without introductory music – wow!

It begins quietly, it continues perfectly. The medical professional and the “patient” both have excellent voices. All-in-all a video one could wish would go on for better than forty five minutes.

But it is a brief one, so we must console ourselves (like the Hollie Berry material) that at least it exists and is on a University channel (and so may exist for a while yet).

The channel is: University of Leicester and at this rate it is likely to become a thoroughgoing favourite on this blog (along with the University of Warwick).

Sadly, it has in excess of 1300 videos. Trawling that lot for the odd additional one is likely to take longer than is sensibly available.

I think falling back on the searching of YouTube for more videos featuring Dr Richard Abbott is a valid approach in this case.

It turns out that this search reveals some ASMR channels have now adopted this video as their very own for example here:

Unintentional ASMR – University of Leicester Exams (without Walkthroughs)

which is on a channel:

Princess Eev [ASMR]

Hopefully it (the channel) sticks around. Some of the pure ASMR channels have disappeared of late and I do wonder if some channel owners fall foul of copyright action (although I have no evidence for this of course).

However, there is another in the same series (sadly only the one more) and as I prefer to get the videos from original sources, if I can, I’ll go with that video.

(I have used pure ASMR channels before this, but I do try to implement the more po-faced approach of locating unintentional ASMR videos the old-fashioned way i.e. by watching a lot of normal videos and trying to locate any restful ones).

Examination of the Cranial Nerves – Explanation

This is just less than sixteen and a quarter minutes long. There is again no startup music, thankyou video recording persons for this (and other such persons take note).

It starts again quietly, it continues quietly, in my view it is every bit as good as the previous one.

The comments indicate the ASMR community love this, with many cross references to other ASMR videos known to those “in the know”. By this stage I imagine that you are all familiar with them as well. There being no mystery to them, other than the need to watch far too much potential ASMR material.

There are notes again: “30 Apr 2012 Clinical Examinations

This is a detailed explanation of the examination of the Cranial Nerves illustrating technique and patient interaction. The film was produced by practising clinicians to aid the teaching of clinical examination skills. It starts at the point when the clinician has finished taking the medical history and begins the clinical examination. Presented by Dr Richard Abbott MD FRCP Consultant Neurologist. Produced and Directed by Dr Irene Peat FRCR FRCP, Dr Nicholas Port MBChB BSc and Jon Shears. More Clinical Examination materials can be found at; http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/msce…”

I’m afraid the urls no longer lead to additional material which, given the video was posted in excess of eleven years ago, is probably no surprise.

In addition, the Internet Archive has no record of it (as at today’s date in any case).

Very regrettably that appears to be all Dr Abbott and “Paul” left for us. They enriched the ASMR community with their (sadly brief) presence and we could have but hoped for more.

So back to what you were doing then, but remember to come back in a week’s time.

The University of Leicester 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 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 Svetozar Cenisev on Unsplash