Tag: Geeky Medics

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I was listening to a podcast in which it was mentioned that “no regrets” was a daft philosophy. The phrase “no regrets” chimed for me and then I remembered it was the name of a song:

and so, in the way that one does, I looked up the song and found out far too much about it.

It did leave in me a question about the effects of relationship breakup on sleep. I have noticed that things like relationship failure are not often taken seriously. Presumably the phrase “man up” would be employed here. I certainly never hear of any time off being awarded because one’s beloved decided that Geoffrey (or Gemma) from Accounts was a better fit.

It would seem that my suspicion that it would have a significant impact is supported with studies demonstrating shorter duration sleep, depression (which also impacted sleep) and fragmented sleep when one finally gets any at all.

Sadly, The Procrastination Pen is not going to try to stir the crocodile-infested waters of relationships. I have no great solutions to offer you. My favourite AI tells me that 22.8% of couples are divorced by their 25th anniversary, which means a colossal number of people are suffering relationship breakup in their lives. I would be prepared to guess that those people do not get used to breakup even when they have been through one previously. The effects on sleep must be quite staggering.

The Procrastination Pen is however designed to try to alleviate some of those insomnia symptoms. The sole way that it attempts to do this is via distraction. Whilst the disciplined have trained their brain to switch off moments after the light is extinguished, the remainder of us would like something to keep the mind distracted whilst sleep slowly takes over.

The method I have chosen is to listen to something whilst trying to sleep. Personally, I find a calming, caring, dare I say it, empathetic, voice is quite effective in these circumstances. I therefore try to find resources that demonstrate that (rare) facility and evaluate them. Quite a lot of the time I wind up on YouTube but I do try to mine the alternative resources that I can find.

This week I thought I would stay on the subject of relationships and the stuff that goes wrong with them and pick on a podcast that I have often listened to, and rarely for the quality of the voice I have to admit: Limerence The Psychology of Romantic Obsession   Brandy Wyant, Being Well. The actual site lists the resource as being on YouTube but the podcast is widely available including Apple. I have often thought that Dr Rick Hanson has an excellent voice, Forrest also has a pretty good voice. I’m not quite so convinced by Brandy’s voice here. However, there are any number of episodes with just Forrest and Dr Rick in them, so it should give you an opportunity to determine if you like them.

The Calm track this week is this:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/zOO7Lqwcg_

Daily Jay

When to Quit

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Quitting is not a sign of failure, although it is never wise to make a snap decision. I rather like that. I’m none too keen on the term failure especially as I read often of people who under one metric were terrible failures and by another great successes. Failure sounds to me like one of those rather too convenient labels you can give to others whose lifestyle you dislike.

Calm requires a subscription; I haven’t come across free Calm content yet. If I do, I’ll be sure to let you know. However, if you do have a subscription, why not try that out.

Some months ago now, I decided that some professional ASMR content should appear in the blog by way of contrast to the inadvertent ASMR which is most definitely still the core theme of this blog.

I’m beginning to realise that I actually prefer videos that were posted a little while ago and I see that on YouTube videos posted prior to the pandemic are now being referred to as “old school” videos. Given that is a scant six years ago now, how young are these ASMR artists on YouTube now?

There seems no reliable way to find really older YouTube videos with most searches on the site indicating that the majority of YouTube viewers preferring new, really new, or exceptionally new, videos and all the filters being optimised to take those preferences into account. I take some kind of perverse pride in exploring pre-pandemic videos where I come across them.

Todays for example, states that it was posted nine years ago and is by an artist that my ASMR index tells me I have not reviewed before (let us pray that is not for a fundamentally good reason). The site is Latte ASMR this site has 2.15m subscribers, three hundred and sixteen videos three playlists, I think that is nearly seven thousand subscribers for every video ever posted by this artist which seems a fairly good return to me.

The online translation service tells me that the three playlists are Japanese Videos, All Korean Videos and All English Videos, so no playlist dedicated to medical videos I’m afraid.

The notes against the channel are magnificently sparse: “Latte ASMR

More info

            http://www.youtube.com/@LatteASMR

            Joined 4 Jan 2016

            2.15m subscribers

            316 videos

            667,479,881 views”

I would guess with that kind of patronage there would be very little need to advertise.

The video is right on theme for us (in that it is a medical examination role play):

Cranial Nerve Exam ASMR

It is a little less than thirty-eight minutes and so moderately substantial. There are notes, of course:”2,570,932 views 10 Nov 2016

Hello! This is Latte 🙂

In this video today, I will do the cranial nerve exam!

Actually, it was a bit challenging to make this video in English.

I don’t know the words that used in medical situation and it was difficult but many of you guys asked me to make more English videos and I took courage from your comments and made this video. So, I had to speak very slowly not to lose my mind. I don’t like the outcome of this video that much but I just did my best!

I know most of you guys are very open-minded and sweet-heart so I believe that you can understand me 🙂 I will not give up anyway. I will make lots of English videos again and again to make better videos!

Thank you for taking your time to watch this video and love you all! ♥

☆If you want to support me ♥:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4170402

★My second channel!

   / @latte5017 

★Instagram

  / latte_asmr “

Which regular readers will recognise are startlingly short for a professional ASMR artist (who habitually can write biblical notes with every video).

Comments are permitted. There are a lot of them, and most seem to be of the off-the-wall variety. That does not bode well. ASMR afficionados tend to wax-lyrical about the videos that they really like, sometimes to quite a nauseating degree. However, that is usually a fair sign that the video is a good one for us.

The video starts without music but there is a kind of background noise. (A hiss, but quite unlike the air conditioning noise that I am used to. It is more probably some kind of artifact from the recording mechanism used). The voice is quite high pitched but it is not whispery so that is quite rare. It sounds to me like the voice I would expect from a child, but the person starring in the video does not look that young. The pace is excellent, very measured. There are additional noises: nails clicking, the rustling of clothing, the odd clunk, paper rustling, the sound of pen scratching against paper, glove-related noises (I’m not a fan of these), the sound of the chinking of a glass vessel, clicking of pen light, what sounds like a small wooden drawer being opened and closed (it is off screen).

There is an amount of whispering during the examination, so that is fairly typical for a professional ASMR artist. There is that mouth clucking/clicking sound so beloved of ASMR professionals. The enunciation of some of the words is properly excellent and not that common in ASMR videos I have found.

There is the occasional oddity; “the liquid of taste” was one that stood out for me. But I thought that added to its charm rather than took away from it. You can probably tell that I very much liked this one. Why not give it a review yourself.

The inadvertent ASMR video this week is, in fact, drawn from a time when I was speculating about the treatment of youngsters and did this mean that people employed a gentler voice, a calmer demeanour, a more measured approach. In fact, did the very fact that a medical professional is dealing with a child mean that they are more likely to produce ASMR material.

I came across not a video but a playlist. It contains six videos however the blog post is already of a reasonable size so I think that I will evaluate the first video and file the other five for a return visit. The playlist is this:

It comes from a channel that I have visited again and again, primarily because it seems to have many suitable videos. It is, of course, Stanford Medicine 25, the playlist on the Procrastination Pen has a fair number of videos drawn from this channel in it.

The first video in this playlist is this one:

Abdominal Examination of the Newborn – Stanford Medicine

It is a little less than four and a half minutes so is another in a long line of brief videos that I have reviewed of late (the content is often great but short videos do maximise the inter video advert breaks).

The notes are sparse in the extreme: “411,093 views 5 Apr 2022

Dr. Bill Benitz demonstrates the abdominal examination of a newborn including identification of the liver edge and palpation of the spleen, kidneys, and a distended bladder.”

Dr Bill appears to be a very prestigious guy so we’re probably honoured to have him (if I did but know enough about medicine to understand it).

The video starts without music, but, in comparison to the professional ASMR artist I just reviewed, Dr. Bill is quite a lot louder. Another situation where the volume button needs to be thumbed down a bit. The speed is nicely slow, however. There is no background noise. The other good thing is that this, in common with all medical professional videos I have reviewed thus far, does not involve any whispering whatsoever. The baby involved is remarkably calm. It does not object in any way, quite surprising. For our purposes it makes for a more restful video though.

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 notice that it has been so hot that we are starting to get advice about sleeping in a heatwave and that a sleep “divorce” is being discussed as a potential solution to some sleep-related issues. One thing that seems to be coming out of recent sleep articles is that people all over the UK (and no doubt elsewhere) are struggling to get enough decent quality sleep. The very high temperatures cannot be helping.

This blog, as regular readers will recognise, is all about sleep but mainly it focuses on sound and how to use sound to distract your mind from all the stresses of the day (and anticipation of the stresses of the day yet to come).

To this end I recommend (and review) a few audio tracks in the hope that you will find them restful. I am also, very gradually, building a playlist of inadvertent ASMR on YouTube which you may find helpful in this respect.

Some time ago I promised that I would find material that was not on YouTube so that those, like me, that loath the state of advertising on YouTube, during the quieter moments of the night could find refuge with another audio facility.

This week I notice that Susan Piver (someone I have mentioned before) has now started a podcast, called “Buddhism Beyond Belief”. It seems to have started in May and is still going strong. I rather like Susan’s voice. I also found that I could click on any of the tracks and they would just play without the need for any kind of logon (unlike some of the Spotify recommendations I have made recently).  There is no obvious mechanism for downloading each track so, sadly, no method for building into your own personal playlist. It may still be worthy of a review however.

The Calm track this week (which is strictly for people who already have a Calm subscription) is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/rUpkBWv51r

Daily Jay

Unlikely Teachers

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

What do unpleasant people teach us about ourselves.

I do not think that there is any free content, so on that basis (given most readers will not have a Calm subscription) I will move swiftly along.

I have, for some months now, been reviewing a professional ASMR artist. I have recently taken refuge in some rather old ASMR in that it is nostalgic for me (I used to listen to these tracks close to the time that they were first posted). This week’s one is this:

Ocean Fabric Affirmations 🕯[ASMR] Whisper

We have featured the channel WhispersRed ASMR before, but for those of you new to the blog, WhispersRed ASMR has 1.12m subscribers, nine hundred and twelve videos, twenty-nine playlists.

Of which this one is dedicated to getting sleepy:

Regular readers will have noticed that I have, yet again, strayed from the core theme of these blog articles which is medical orientated videos. I have been reviewing such videos for a long time and I assure you that I will be returning to them as well. 

The notes on the channel are quite informative including the fact that WhispersRed has been posting videos for thirteen years now (wow):

“WhispersRed ASMR

Description

Welcome home 💜 Make yourself cosy, put your feet up and I’ll pop the kettle on.

ASMR Tingles ✨ Relaxation ✨ Sleep ✨ Sound Therapy ✨ Silence ✨ Peace ✨ Love ✨ Smiles

Emma WhispersRed, Emma Smith, YouTube Mum

London, England

Links

Vlog Channelyoutube.com/@Emma_WhispersRed

Children’s Channelyoutube.com/c/WhispersRedASMRForChildren

Websitewhispersredasmr.com

Dog Rescue Charitywhispaws.org

Instagraminstagram.com/whispersred_asmr

TikToktiktok.com/@whispersredasmr

Facebookfacebook.com/WhispersRedASMR

More info

            http://www.youtube.com/@WhispersRedASMR

            United Kingdom

            Joined 12 Apr 2013

            1.12m subscribers

            912 videos

            433,408,137 views”   

As you can see the notes are pretty comprehensive (read extremely long). The majority of professional ASMR artists seem to double as part-time authors if the length of their notes is anything to go by.

The video is a little over thirty-two minutes and it also has humongous notes; associated with it. This time I think I’ll edit them down (a lot):

“663,439 views 16 Jan 2020 #whispersred #asmr

An ASMR affirmations whisper using ocean fabric hands sound, candle gazing, smudging and fluffy mics for close comforting hair sounds 💜0:01 – Introduction 6:53 – Guided relaxation 14:36 – Affirmations begin 23:39 – Repeated affirmations for sleep 29:09 – Goodnight, Sleep tight, with LOVE from me 🌟

Items in this video:

🌸US Links – Satya Incense collection including Celestial – https://amzn.to/2u4hpAt

Silver grey blanket https://amzn.to/30o6wFG

🌷UK Links – Satya Incense with Celestial https://amzn.to/2teboRK

Silver Grey Blanket https://amzn.to/2uSixaB

📚My ASMR Book – Unwind Your Mind: The Life-changing power of ASMR https://campsite.bio/whispersredasmr – Published by Ebury/PenguinRandomHouse in the UK/Europe and Harper One in the US and Canada. Available in Hardback, Paperback, Audiobook and Ebook.”

The full set of notes are interesting to true ASMR afficionados and no doubt to out-and-out WhispersRed fans.

Comments are permitted. There are a fair number and as per usual some are lauding WhispersRed as the pinnacle of ASMRishness. Some are just peculiar. This seems pretty average for any YouTube video. (Some YouTube videos also attract some rather nasty comments, but not so here, as far as I can tell).

The video starts without music and I suppose the clue was in the name of the channel in that we can hear that we are focused on the whispery; in fact, I would say it is on the whispery side of whispery.

Emma mimics ocean sounds by dragging her hands across fabric (and it is really very believable). If you find ocean sounds restful, I would say you would be hard pressed to tell the difference with your eyes closed. I am mainly here for the voice and whilst I prefer presentations that are not focused on whispery, as whispery presentations go, this is a good one.

There is the crackling of a burning candle, the sound of a cigarette lighter, the clicking of nails and that ongoing fabric sound which could easily be the waves retreating over sand, if you did not know better. I thought it quite a clever effect and I’m not certain who first worked out that you could employ fabric in this way. The blowing of a Joss Stick quite effectively mimics the wind blowing; it really is quite carefully put together. It even includes a few well-placed affirmations; I’m quite in favour of an affirmation so I would say that gives it extra kudos.

I can now remember what it is caused me to listen to it all those years ago. In fact, whether it was the heat or the restfulness of this video I did find myself nodding whilst listening to it. In terms of this blog, therefore, I would deem that a success.

Why not review it yourself and see what you think.

The inadvertent ASMR video this week is from a channel that regular readers will already know. It is from Oxford Medical Education a channel with 164k subscribers, thirty two videos, nine playlists, and I have mined this channel for material repeatedly. Some of the videos have actually been quite good.

The video is this one:

Neck Examination – ENT

It is a little less than four minutes so play close attention or you’ll miss it!

There are notes of course: “338,976 views 17 Feb 2012

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the ENT faculty – demonstrates how to perform an examination of the neck. It also demonstrates the lymph node regions of the neck.

All videos on this channel are linked to Oxford Medical Education (www.oxfordmedicaleducation.com)

This video was produced in collaboration with Oxford Medical Illustration – a department of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. For more information, please visit http://www.oxfordmi.nhs.uk”

How lovely and succinct they are, compared to those for the previous video.

The video starts without music but I was somewhat shocked after WhispersRed how loud the narrator initially sounded. This might be one to thumb the volume down a little. It might also be that in the context of the Procrastination Pen playlist it will fit right in. Something goes wrong with the video at about twenty seconds – it makes a very odd sound and the screen goes crazy for about three seconds. That is a great shame the video is otherwise quite calming. One of those where if I owned the video, I would cut that section out altogether. The medical professional has a great voice for our purposes, quite calm and quiet. However, sadly he does not get to talk as frequently as the narrator in this one. The “patient” doesn’t get to talk at all. The narrator has quite a good voice but not quite as great as the medical professional here. It might be that she has been instructed to be louder in order to be clear for the (no doubt students) attending to the video. It was not, after all, recorded for us ASMR fans.

The only problem from my perspective was the rather active advert that kicked in immediately afterwards.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The Oxford Medical Education 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

Recently it has been warm. Actually, warm does not even begin to describe it. It has been the kind of warm that must attend a sweating person’s undergarments. It has been hot and humid, and the kind of weather that makes you wonder why winter seems such a terrible idea.

One of the things that I find when it is like this is that lying in a pool of your own sweat is not that conducive to sleep. I also find that a couple of asthmatic tower fans do not really begin to make a dent in it. I am also hearing colleagues discussing the relative merits of this air conditioning system or that one.

England seems a quite different place to what I am used to if air conditioning starts to become as normal as formally a gas boiler would have been.

In these times as far as I can tell, all that is feasible is to rest, trust that your body is going to sleep when it has to, oh, and listen to a nice distracting playlist. It is for the latter that the Procrastination Pen has been reviewing calming material (predominantly from YouTube) for the last mumble-mumble months now. (It’s been a long while).

I am making efforts to live up to my promise of finding Internet-available material which is both free of adverts and also free of cost. (I think I was something of a lummock for promising it in the first place, but the endeavour persists).

This week I remembered that I had heard a meditation from someone called Chris Murchison called “I Am”. I found a copy of it here: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts/item/happiness_break_an_affirmation_practice_for_the_new_year

There is no obvious download button, however, there was also nothing that demanded payment. It is quite brief and there is some music, which is not my preferred thing. However, I found that Chris has a relaxing voice. Why not give it a try for yourself.

Whilst I’m looking at past relaxing material, I found that I had at one time been listening to this week’s professional ASMR artist in the past. The video is not on a medical theme but it is a goody (in my opinion).

The video is this one:

🌙* Sleepy Time🌙* ASMR * Soft Sounds * Massage *

It is from a channel that I have reviewed before

Gentle Whispering ASMR which has 2.43m subscribers, 848 videos, and 14 playlists.

There is even a playlist on a medical theme:

containing thirty-eight videos no less.

Today’s video is dated 2016 which is when I would have been listening to it. The notes, as usual, for a professional ASMR artist are making a run for war and peace in terms of their length:

“1 May 2016 #Gentlewhispering #ASMR #relax

Good evening🌙 ^_^ In this video we will scratch a pillow 00:59, make sleepy sweeping sounds with it 03:15, tuck you in with a soft blanket 06:22, massage your shoulders and your neck to help you relax more while learning why it is so good for you 08:45, then we’ll rub your temples and your forehead to sooth any tension you might have 17:00, help you locate and relax your jaw muscles 21:14 and at the end we’ll use a tissue technique 23:05 to help you close your eyes and fall asleep faster 🙂 I hope you’ll enjoy this simple and light video. Thank you for watching! 🌙 ♥

Disclaimer: ***- This video is created for relaxation, entertainment and ASMR/tingles/chills inducing purposes only. For more information about ASMR phenomenon please click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomo…

-This video cannot replace any medication or professional treatment. If you have sleep/anxiety/psychological troubles please consult your physician. Thank you 🙂

Email: MariaGentlewhispering@gmail.com

#ASMR #Gentlewhispering #relax”

As usual I have truncated those quite a bit. The video is a little over twenty-six and a quarter minutes. There are a shed-ton of comments. As usual there is lots of fawning commentary with the odd strange comment thrown in to remind you this is YouTube.

There is no startup music and the presentation is heavily dependent on whispery, breathy presentation. Pretty standard for a professional ASMR artist then. I do prefer them less on the whispery side personally, probably because such videos are comparatively rare. The voice is so quiet that at intervals what is being said cannot be made out (by me at any rate). However, the tone is so restful and quiet and the pace so marvellously slow. There is a persistent background hiss but it is barely noticeable. (I had turned the volume up a bit as the presentation really is that quiet).

There are non-vocal sounds of course: nails clicking on sequins, fabric-related noises, (some of those do not seem to be that restful), stroking of a cushion (which is uncannily like an ocean noise), stroking of a jumper, rustling noises, fingers tapping on material.

At intervals my mind did start to drift a bit which is perhaps not a good sign. Then again it could be a sign that if I was horizontal, I would have drifted off at that point.

I would say this one was definitely worthy of a review, why not take a look yourself.

The Calm track this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/yS_L-ODr3t

Daily Trip

Awareness for Curious Cats

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

What is awareness? We can never fully know ourselves but we can try.

I know the chances are that relatively few of you will have a Calm subscription and I am not going to sell you one. However, if you do subscribe to Calm, why not give that a try.

For the inadvertent ASMR we are back, once again, with a channel that I have covered many times previously, that is Geeky Medics. This channel has 1.44m subscribers, three hundred and fifty four videos, twenty playlists and occasionally we do find a really rather relaxing video. With the downside that as far as I remember every single video I have reviewed from this channel has music.

Today’s video is this one:

Tinel’s & Phalen’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip | UKMLA | CPSA | PLAB 2

In common with several recent inadvertent ASMR videos of late it is rather short at a little less than one and a half minutes. The video still has notes though: “2 Oct 2022 Neurological Examination OSCE Guides | CPSA | UKMLA | PLAB | MRCS

This video demonstrates how to screen for sensory loss in the hands in an OSCE station. Sensory assessment of the hands (radial, median, ulnar nerve) is commonly performed as part of a hand and wrist examination.

Tinel’s and Phalen’s test screen specifically for median nerve compression (i.e. carpal tunnel syndrome).

You can read our step-by-step guide to hand and wrist examination here: https://geekymedics.com/hand-examinat…

Always adhere to medical school/local hospital guidelines when performing examinations or clinical procedures. DO NOT perform any examination or procedure on patients based purely on the content of these videos. Geeky Medics accepts no liability for loss of any kind incurred as a result of reliance upon the information provided in this video.

 Achieve success in your medical school OSCEs, UKMLA CPSA, and PLAB 2 exams with our free clinical skills videos. Subscribe to our channel to be informed of our latest releases. 🙂

CPSA OSCE Guides https://geekymedics.com/the-clinical-…

 UKMLA AKT Notes https://geekymedics.com/ukmla/

 PLAB 2 OSCE Stations https://geekymedics.com/plab-2-osce-s…

Revise for the Simulated Consultation Assessment (SCA) with our collection of high-quality SCA cases written by GPs and Training Program Directors. Check out our SCA revision cases and prepare for the MRCGP https://geekymedics.com/sca-cases-ban…”

Again I have edited those down a tad.

Despite how short this video is there is still time, apparently, for startup music (I am not a fan). The examination is not quiet, but the tone is good and the pace is excellent. Without the music it might even have been very good indeed. There is even further music at the tail end of the same video… it’s a great shame, I need a Geeky Medics Senza Musica but no such channel exists.

Still worth a review though I feel.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The Geeky Medics 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

This week I have been examining supplements to determine if my mistake of the other week (in which I believe I took too much magnesium) is complicated by the fact that a number of supplements contain magnesium. I found that in fact they do. Three different bottles I read the ingredients list of contain magnesium in one form or another. Taking more than one set of supplements may have a greater impact than would seem at first sight to be the case.

I also read this week that glucosamine (an apparently benign supplement to assist with aching joints) has a rather nasty potential side effect. This all makes me somewhat nervous about supplements and the recommending of them. Todays symptom-free supplement for sleep assistance might be tomorrow’s carcinogen, for example. It also goes to show that articles on the Internet, wherever they derive from and no matter how prestigious and reliable the author purports to be, need to be taken with a container load of salt.

The search for material that is advert free and yet is also no cost continues, and I am getting to trawling some pretty ancient stuff to find it. Some time ago I remember that I heard a meditation by Natalie Bell.

Of course, YouTube resources for Natalie exist, such as this one:

Nonetheless, that does not get us to a free – advert-free resource,

However, I did find a set on SoundCloud which is accessible simply by creating a login:

https://soundcloud.com/natbell77/sets/natalie-bell-meditations.

Of course, whilst I still maintain a subscription, I tend to post something from Calm each week. Maybe there’s the odd Calm subscriber out there who hasn’t had chance to listen to the same meditations that I have. Maybe we could even swap notes about it…

https://www.calm.com/app/player/bCDgJm-Jo4

Daily Trip

Deep Acceptance

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

Can you back out of the way things are supposed to be to the way things actually are?

Jeff is the presenter on Calm that I have the greatest sympathy with. I often feel that we are wired in the same way. He does not have the best voice on Calm, I think that might belong to Tamara Levitt. But don’t tell anyone in case it goes to her head.

I have another “Isabel Imagination” this week. I have a feeling I may have spent a while listening to her channel in the past and built up a resource in terms of previously-viewed video material to return to. As a professional ASMR artist, either she is remarkably consistent or I have been lucky and happened across a few videos that happen to be ok to listen to.

This week’s one is this one:

ASMR Nurse Personal Attention Role Play

Of course, I have detailed the channel one or two times previously, but for those who have happened across the blog, and have not read my ASMR reviews before, the channel is Isabel imagination ASMR.

This has 381k subscribers, six hundred and forty three videos, thirty three playlists.

Of which I rather liked this one:

Even though it is completely off-theme for this blog (I have tended to focus on medical-orientated videos).

Today’s video is a little over thirty and a half minutes long and so isn’t huge but seems fairly consistent (in terms of length) for the videos from Isabel that we have featured. It starts with that trademark crackly effect that regular listeners will be familiar with and, as usual, we are onto a whispery presentation (at least there isn’t any startup music).

This one has some background noise, presumably associated with the theme which this time is not just medical but wartime medical. Thankfully that noise does not last long. Things then get a bit breathy. I’m not averse to breathy, just not an excessive amount of it. As usual the voice is a whisper, but unusually for a while anyway, it sounds at a distance as if the person is remote from the microphone. I believe this is part of the effect as well. Things do settle down and the excessive breathiness and strange effects are dispensed with and it’s whispers all the way.

If you like a video with good presentation, you should like this one as the background does look authentic. I always assume anyone reading this blog is flat out with eyes closed when listening to the material and so what it looks like is not that important.

As usual, the tone of the voice is excellent and the pacing really good. One day I will find one that isn’t a whisper and it will be even better (as long as the voice is calm, quiet and the pacing slow, in any case).

I did find that occasionally it would get very quiet and the next time that Isabel spoke I was shaken back to awareness. There is the rustling sound of a pillow and that mouth clicking/clucking sound so beloved of ASMR artists; the sound of clothing moving; paper being handled; moments of out-and-out breathiness.

Occasionally my focus on the video wandering a little which doesn’t sound a good sign but it might be ideal when using it for sleep. I also wondered if any “patient” would truly get this level of attention – thirty minutes of dedicated attention sounds like your average patient’s dream and your average hospital’s unaffordable nightmare. I don’t think anyone is supposed to think about the reality of the situation when watching these videos but I can’t help but consider how realistic it all is.

This week’s inadvertent ASMR video comes from a channel that I have featured before more than once. The channel is Geeky Medics https://www.youtube.com/@geekymedics. This has 1.44m subscribers, three hundred and fifty four videos twenty playlists and unsurprisingly all of that content appears to be medical themed. The channel has notes: “Geeky Medics

Description

Geeky Medics has built a reputation as a leading producer of high-quality educational resources. Achieve success in your medical school OSCEs, UKMLA CPSA, and PLAB 2 exams with our free clinical skills videos. Subscribe to our channel to be informed of our latest releases!

Links

Create a Geeky Medics accountapp.geekymedics.com

Geeky Medics product bundlesapp.geekymedics.com/purchase/bundles

Download the Geeky Medics appgeekymedics.com/geeky-medics-app

1300+ OSCE Stationsapp.geekymedics.com/osce-stations

OSCE Booksapp.geekymedics.com/purchase/compare-books

Linktreelinktr.ee/geekymedics

Instagraminstagram.com/geekymedics”

Which are quite comprehensive I’m sure you’ll agree. The video is this one:

Sensory Assessment of the Upper Limbs – OSCE Guide (Clip) | UKMLA | CPSA | PLAB 2

It is a mere whisper itself, at three minutes in length. There are notes of course – it’s a professional video: “19 Dec 2023

This clip demonstrates how to perform a sensory examination of the upper limbs, including assessment of light touch, pinprick, vibration and proprioception modalities.

Read our step-by-step guide here: https://geekymedics.com/upper-limb-ne…

Chapters:

Introduction 00:00

Light touch sensation 00:10

Pin-prick sensation 00:51

Vibration sensation 01:39

Joint proprioception 02:02

Always adhere to your medical school/local hospital guidelines when performing examinations or clinical procedures. DO NOT perform any examination or procedure on patients based purely upon the content of these videos. Geeky Medics accepts no liability for loss of any kind incurred as a result of reliance upon the information provided in this video.

Some people have found this video useful for ASMR purposes.

Revise for the Simulated Consultation Assessment (SCA) with our collection of high-quality SCA cases written by GPs and Training Program Directors. Check out our SCA revision cases and prepare for the MRCGP https://geekymedics.com/sca-cases-ban…”

So not so much notes perhaps, as a mini encyclopaedia. I had to edit them down a lot the blog post would have been mainly notes otherwise. There are comments but there are precious few of those and none of them seem to be from ASMR fans. If there are ASMR fans here they seem to be being unusually reticent.

It starts with music which is a shame, but it does not last long. The voice of both the doctor and of the patient are calm and quiet. There is no extraneous noise at all. It isn’t even possible to hear the tuning fork which in some other videos can be rather loud. It ends with music as well and this goes on for quite a bit longer than the startup music. It is also rather too funky to be restful; it would be great to have the same video topped and tailed to eliminate that music. In all it is a rather good video for our purposes just, sadly, way too short.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The Geeky Medics 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’m spending some time recently exploring psychology books and trying to work out if I am actually learning anything about myself, or if I have an ego sufficiently huge that nothing is ever going to penetrate it. I have found that no matter how many books I read, it does not seem to translate into more of a restful life. Which probably says a great deal about my inability to learn effectively.

So, given life is carrying on at the hubbub it had last year (or more likely an ever-increasing pace with each passing year), I have found it helpful to have something restful to listen to. It was for this reason that I started to explore ASMR. I’m not sure if I am a typical ASMR listener, (I have a sinking sensation that many such people are a great deal younger for instance).I did pretty swiftly find that the quality of “ASMR” was highly variable. I wondered how I would settle down with an ASMR track in the hope of getting to sleep, knowing that the ASMR video was actually going to be restful (and not crammed with all kinds of weird effects designed to hammer on every “trigger”, as if it needed a 4lb hammer).

After a while I realised that I couldn’t depend on the commentary associated with the videos. It ranges from sycophantic through aggressive, onto asinine. The review sites I found seemed to belong to people whose ears were obviously assembled in a different factory to mine. Therefore, I was going to have to review the material in advance before I wanted to use it and make use of some method of storing the ones that were worth listening to.

YouTube played material without paying up front. At the time, the adverts really did not seem too overpowering, but the clincher was that you could assemble the items that you liked into a playlist for subsequent playing. There was no need to own the videos to do so.

I also discovered that you could make the playlist public, so that other people could benefit from the work that you had done.

I reasoned that I would have to be pretty formal in my approach and hence, this process of reviewing videos started. I hope that you have ears not too dissimilar to mine and that therefore you will like the videos that I like.

If so, the Procrastination Pen playlist always appears at the end of every one of these articles and you can hop over to YouTube and see if you like what you hear.

A little while ago I started listening to Calm, mostly because it does not have the advertising load of a YouTube track. The downside is that you are going to need a subscription.

For many people this will be a show-stopper and if so, the YouTube reviews are coming very soon in this article (scroll down a bit). I used to be the same. I find too often now I’ve drifted off to a charming little ASMR video only to have some loud and distracting advert kick off and rouse me back to wakefulness again. In fact, of late this has become so frequent that I think it is by design. Advertising pays the bills, after all.

Today’s Calm track is taken from the Calm Dailies. I find these rather more approachable than Calm “sleep” tracks. The artists involved, frankly, have better voices. The Calm Dailies do not have music (I find music is just not as restful as people would have you believe). Some of the Calm “sleep” tracks involve an actual story and so rather than drifting off to la la land, you find yourself engaging with the story.

The Calm track this week is this one:

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

Daily Calm

Thinking

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

Tamara has a great voice. She maybe my favourite but I rather like Jeff Warren, so I dither in the mornings when I am looking at the next track. That said, Jay Shetty has much of the more interesting material, especially if I need a mental kick up the backside – which is most of the time, frankly.

This is quite a long one for a Calm Daily, in that it is nigh on 11 minutes in length. It is about obsessive thinking. If you find yourself struggling with intrusive thoughts at bedtime, this may well be the track for you.

I’ve settled into a semi-rigid structure for several weeks now: Calm review, professional ASMR review, inadvertent ASMR review. The blog originally only considered inadvertent ASMR videos. It has evolved this way. So, in deference to custom, this is this week’s video from a professional ASMR artist:

ASMR – Extremely Satisfying Allergy Test!

It’s a professional ASMR video so of course it has notes and of course the notes are going to promote the ASMR artist: “410,294 views 24 Sept 2025

Hi guys, welcome back! In today’s video I’m doing your allergy test. Hope you enjoy!

My Spotify Nanou ASMR: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2trBl…

My TikTok ASMR: nanouasmrofficial

My Dutch vlog channel (with subtitles):    / @nanouphilipsvlogs  

My new English vlog channel:    / @nanouphilips  

🖥 My other channel:    / @nanouphilips 

🖥 My channel with shorts:    / @nanouasmrshorts 

📱My Instagram:   / nanouphilips 

🎥 Production: Arc Agency – contact: info@arcagency.be

TikTok: nanou.philips

TikTok ASMR: nanouasmrofficial

Twitch:   / nanouasmr  

🅿️Paypal: https://paypal.me/NanouASMR

📧 E-mail: nanou.asmr@outlook.be”

The notes were so extensive I’ve given you the edited highlights, which, to my mind, are still way too long.

There are comments, of course, and, of course, because it is a professional ASMR artist they vie towards the sycophantic side. So far, so usual.

The video comes from the channel Nanou ASMR, this has 1.75M subscribers, seven hundred and fifty-two videos nineteen playlists, more than one of those playlists has in excess of one hundred videos. So, a hard-working ASMR artist – full kudos given. I am a little concerned because the last video I listened to that had in excess of 1.5 million people raving about it, I really couldn’t get on with at all. Let’s see how this one fares.

It is surprising how often a video starts from a professional ASMR artist that raves about their latest sponsor and so it is a rare experience to be free of that. I disregard completely the many I find that do that. Making money is reasonable but I do find this disrupts the ASMR experience, whether you introduce sponsor du jour in a whispering voice or you do not.

In this case we are music free, sponsor free, and the video starts instead with what I assume to be recognised “trigger” sounds.

Clucking noises, keyboard noises, paper-related noises, donning-gloves noises, crinkling noises, tapping noises, liquid noises, a potpourri of sound, presumably designed as a catch-all of “triggers” for any attending ASMR devotee.

I am not really interested in that. I’m here for the voice and so how is it? The voice as you would expect, with such a popular artist, is excellent. Presentation is on the whispery side of whispery and so is about as believable as Boffo for Prime Minister, but this does not detract from its effectiveness as an ASMR voice or as the audio for a restful video. It does that job very well, in fact.

Sadly, the keyboard is selected for its ability to be heard which is sad, because I would prefer that it wasn’t heard at all. I think the keyboard is distracting and excessively loud. No doubt there are some ASMR fans who just love that kind of thing (I guess a number of subscribers to this YouTube channel, in fact).

There are quite a few rustling noises, gloves, clothing, the ASMR artist moving around. This is not obtrusive and so if it isn’t your thing either, it should not cause any concerns.

I’m not sure why ASMR artists do that clicking/clucking noise at intervals with their tongue, it seems out of place to me, but I just bet there is a die-hard devotee that turns up for new videos just to hear that sort of thing.

The plastic arm that intrudes into view and is then drawn on with a felt tipped pen is a tad on the surreal side, as if Metal Mickey had turned up for an examination. Given that you’ll be listening rather than watching, I’d say this should not have any impact. I’d say the video goes on about two to three minutes longer than I would have liked but a heck of a lot of subscribers disagree with me. On that basis you may want to give it a review.

The routine in these articles for the last few months has been that now I deal with the material on which I originally based the blog i.e. inadvertent ASMR videos. Of late, this has been videos on a medical theme, just because I have found a lot of success finding calm and restful videos where those videos were designed to illustrate some medical concept or other.

This week we are back to a channel that has featured multiple times on this blog here, here, here, here and also here.  It is Geeky Medics. The videos so far have featured Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh, and so in this week’s article.

The dedication to this channel has been because the videos here seem to be of a reasonably consistent quality (given that they are inadvertent ASMR videos in any case). They have a tendency to be quiet. There is though the regrettable tendency for the odd distracting noise to crop up in them.

Of course, some readers will not have read the previous articles, so I should mention that Dr Lewis Potter is the founder of Geeky Medics. The videos will all have notes that are similar (this has been established in those past blog articles). In order to cover the notes for new readers, I will give a precis version with the first video.

I think this will be the concluding such article, as I believe I have calculated that we have covered very nearly every video available. I make it that there are six left to cover and so we’ll mop those up in this article. I suspect we are getting a bit towards the tail-end in terms of quality as well but I live to be surprised.

Straight Leg Raise & Femoral Nerve Stretch Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

In case there are people who have not read any of those previous articles, I will include the notes associated with this video so you see how they work. The notes are lengthy and I’ll only include them once (or this will grow to become a very long article composed principally of notes).

The notes are: “48,856 views 14 Sept 2022  Musculoskeletal Examination OSCE Guides | CPSA | UKMLA | PLAB | MRCS

This video demonstrates how to perform a straight leg raise (a.k.a. sciatic stretch test) and a femoral nerve stretch test in an OSCE station.

You can read our step-by-step guide to the examination of the spine here: https://geekymedics.com/spine-examina…

Check out our other awesome clinical skills resources, including:

• 🔥 Geeky Medics Bundles (discounted products): https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• ✨ 1000+ OSCE Stations: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 🏥 Geeky Medics OSCE Revision Book: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 📝 150+ PDF OSCE Checklists: https://geekymedics.com/pdf-osce-chec…

• 🗂️ 3000+ OSCE Flashcards: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 📱 Geeky Medics OSCE App: https://geekymedics.com/geeky-medics-…

• 🩺 Medical Finals SBA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 💊 PSA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

Chapters:

00:00 Straight leg raise

00:36 Femoral nerve stretch test

Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know about our latest content: https://geekymedics.com/newsletter/ ✉️

Join the Geeky Medics community: 👩👩👧👧

TikTok:   / geekymedics 

Twitter:   / geekymedics 

Instagram:   / geekymedics 

Facebook:   / geekymedics 

Always adhere to medical school/local hospital guidelines when performing examinations or clinical procedures. DO NOT perform any examination or procedure on patients based purely on the content of these videos. Geeky Medics accepts no liability for loss of any kind incurred as a result of reliance upon the information provided in this video.

Achieve success in your medical school OSCEs, UKMLA CPSA, and PLAB 2 exams with our free clinical skills videos. Subscribe to our channel to be informed of our latest releases. 🙂

CPSA OSCE Guides https://geekymedics.com/the-clinical-…

UKMLA AKT Notes https://geekymedics.com/ukmla/

PLAB 2 OSCE Stations https://geekymedics.com/plab-2-osce-s…

Revise for the Simulated Consultation Assessment (SCA) with our collection of high-quality SCA cases written by GPs and Training Program Directors. Check out our SCA revision cases and prepare for the MRCGP https://geekymedics.com/sca-cases-ban…”

As we have heard in the previous articles, these videos commence with an unwelcome piece of startup music. So far, I have found no mechanism for removing startup music on someone else’s video. If I had, you would see more of the videos that have been rejected on the road to getting the odd “acceptable” one out to you.

I have tolerated the startup music in previous Geeky Medics videos and I will do so this time. It does not preclude bumping them to the archive list at some point in the future.

This video is a little over one and a half minutes so it is rapidly over with. It is the voice here that is excellent. There is background noise but it is not excessive. There are periods of silence which might be distracting whilst listening. Personally, I found this quite restful.

There is tail end music which is even louder than the startup music and it would be great if it just wasn’t there at all. Of course, given the video is a short one, there is much more opportunity for distracting adverts which was certainly maximised at the time I was reviewing this one.

Lachman’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

One and a quarter minutes long and so none of the ones we’re looking at this week seem to be very long at all. It finds time for the distracting start up music though. It is nicely calm in the few moments it is actually playing. However, it also finds time for the even louder tail end music – I’d have to ask why this is necessary.

Anterior & Posterior Drawer Test & Collateral Ligaments Assessment – OSCE Guide | Clip

Just over one and a half minutes and now we’re in the swing of these, we know how it will go, distracting start up music, nice calm presentation, even worse tail end music, YouTube advert…

Patella Tap & Sweep Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

All of these seem of a similar length; this is the same length as the last one. The format is the same as the previous ones including unwelcome musical parts. This video seems to have been substantially slowed down and is mostly silent. This makes for very calming watching but does not contribute much when you’re listening and not watching.

Thomas Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

This one is shorter at just over one and a quarter minutes. Same format as the previous ones. In common with previous OSCE videos there are on screen medical notes for medical students. Of course, these are of no interest to us. The presentation is beautifully calming, but oh so brief and it’s back to funky music again.

Trendelenburg’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

The last ever such video and the last item in blog posts featuring Geeky Medics. It has been a while now. This is the shortest so far at only slightly over a minute. Same music top and tail. Same on-screen notes, useful to medical students but not to us. Same calming voice but this time we barely have time to hear it before it is back to the music again.

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

The Geeky Medics 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 DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

If you have had an interaction in which you do not feel you came off well, or even that you did not behave like an adult, it can be hard to let that go when it comes time for sleep. The pillow may feel like it has been welded together from jagged metal. The mattress, as if it has been ebonised. The temperature in the room will be just that level of uncomfortable that means tossing and turning seems a much better choice than real shut-eye.

In such circumstances it can be best to distract the mind from any self-perceived lack of emotional control and, instead, to listen to a soothing voice. Especially if it is there to convince you that nobody died and tomorrow you get a fresh start. Perfect doesn’t exist, after all.

It is for such restless night-times that this blog has recently (and for some time) been exploring resources that may help to settle the runaway wagon that can be the thought processes when the bedroom is not as welcoming as perhaps it could be.

A little while ago I started listening to Calm, mostly because it does not have the advertising load of a YouTube track. The downside is that you are going to need a subscription. I realise for some people that buying the groceries is something of a struggle, and so an extra few pounds on such a luxury item is just not realistic. If you are one of those people, scroll past the next section and onto the stuff that is supported by advertising and therefore “free” (for a given value of free).

Today’s Calm track is taken from the Calm dailies rather than from tracks dedicated to sleep. This is because I cannot currently get on with the tracks on Calm dedicated to sleep. I am not finding them restful enough to make a difference on the days when I have acquainted myself with every patch of the ceiling that I should have repainted years ago and, somehow, have never got around to doing so.

The other benefit is that the Calm dailies are brief, typically hovering around ten minutes. The advantage being if the one selected is not for you, well, it is a matter of very little time before you can move onto another one.

So far, I have not found the functionality to create a playlist of such tracks (it may well not exist). So, I’m afraid that is a limitation of the interface. (At least via the web in any case).

The Calm track this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/PTAKI4ZSz_

Daily Jay

Self-Stories

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

This is about the stories that you tell yourself and how to weed out the less helpful ones. (Say, that message you’ve been feeding yourself about how childish you have been recently).

It is less than eight minutes and I do think worthy of review, assuming that you have a Calm subscription anyway.

If you have been reading this blog at all in 2025 you now realise that after the Calm suggestion, I move on to examine a single video on YouTube from a professional ASMR artist.

I am not as kind to the professional ASMR artists as I am to those participants in an inadvertent ASMR video. The latter are probably unaware their video is going to be used for ASMR purposes. I can hardly be damning about the incidence of unwelcoming noises therefore (although I often use such noises to exclude them from consideration).

Professional ASMR artists, meantime, are creating the video specifically to appeal to those who enjoy a calming experience. I wouldn’t expect, therefore, for such videos to contain unwelcome noises. You can be certain if the video does contain unwelcome noises that I am going to raise the fact in a very pointed fashion.

Today’s video is this one:

ASMR｜Blending herbal medicines at an old pharmacy🫚Teaching true healing｜roleplay｜sleep｜relax｜Japan

This commences with a very brief tune. Although I dislike startup music in such videos, I think this is forgivable and it is hardly intrusive. The comments are largely in Japanese which is a new experience, in that I cannot tell you if the participants are really rating the video or giving it a right going over for being terrible.

There are notes, which are somewhat extensive, for which reason I have hacked them to pieces (if you would like to see the (much) longer version they are available on YouTube: “270,858 views  Premiered on 11 Aug 2025  #TwitterとInstagramのフォローもぜひよろしくお願いしますっ

This work was inspired by Uirō-uri, one of the “Kabuki Jūhachiban” (The Eighteen Great Kabuki Plays).＿🖋️

In the story, the protagonist Sukeroku disguises himself as a merchant selling a medicine called Uirō and comically delivers a rapid-fire speech about its effects.

…

ASMR is all about delicate sounds.

But since my ears haven’t been in great shape, I edited the video by watching the sound waves (dB meter) instead of relying only on listening—so the production was quite a struggle.

Also, maybe because of that, the pitch of my comfortable speaking voice keeps getting lower.

I never liked my voice to begin with, and now I like it even less, which makes me sad…

But I’d be happy if you keep watching as always!

(Even if my voice turns all raspy, you’ll still be here for me, right? 🙂←)”

The notes do not seem to bode well but we’ll bravely soldier on. The channel is dot okome._ch / maika ASMR which has 109K subscribers – wowee. This achieved with only ninety-three videos and eight playlists. My goodness, what kind of a wonder is this channel.

The video itself is somewhat more than forty-three minutes in length. Professional ASMR artists seemingly either go in for epic videos of the type requiring commitment to get all the way through, or ASMR “shorts” which whistle by and barely make an impression.

There are various additional noises, ceramic noises, items being moved around, rustling noises, crinkling noises, water pouring noises. None of these are particularly distracting.

I am here, of course, to review the voice, which, for me, is the main appeal. As expected, it is well-nigh perfect here.

The presentation (should you be watching rather than just listening) is rather beautiful. The interior and the objects within it obviously selected for their visual appeal.

The voice is quiet but rarely strays into true whispering.

Despite the concerns echoed in the notes I would say the tone of the voice is reasonably consistent (certainly to my elderly ears). Of course, the presentation is in Japanese which may put off some listeners. There is music at the tail end of the video but it is hardly alarming or nippy. I would say that this video is definitely worthy of a review.

Of course, a loud and obtrusive advert banged straight in afterwards and destroyed the atmosphere completely.

For the more usual material (for this blog), I have been looking at medical videos habitually. The aim is to find videos designed for medical tuition that are also relaxing.

This week we are back to a channel that has featured multiple times on this blog here, here, here, here and also here.  It is Geeky Medics. The videos so far have featured Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh, and so in this week’s article.

The dedication to this channel has been because the videos here seem to be of a reasonably consistent quality (given that they are inadvertent ASMR videos in any case). They have a tendency to be quiet. However, there is the regrettable tendency for the odd distracting noise to crop up in them.

Of course, some readers will not have read the previous articles so I should mention that Dr Lewis Potter is the founder of Geeky Medics. The videos will all have notes that are similar (this has been established in those past blog articles). However, in order to cover the notes for new readers, I will give a precis version with the first video.

As for previous incidences of blog article featuring this channel, I am only going to feature a subset of the videos on offer. There are just too many to make a blog article of anything like a readable length. Plus, the review will have a tendency to be repetitive, and hence dull, I would think.

Abdominal Palpation – OSCE Guide | Clip

The notes associated with this video are very long, the edited highlights are as follows:

“178,182 views 31 Aug 2022 Gastroenterology OSCE Guides | CPSA | UKMLA | PLAB | MRCS

This video demonstrates how to palpate the abdomen including assessing the bowel, liver, spleen, kidneys and aorta. Abdominal palpation is commonly performed as part of a full abdominal examination in an OSCE station.

You can read our guide to abdominal examination here: https://geekymedics.com/abdominal-exa…

…

Always adhere to medical school/local hospital guidelines when performing examinations or clinical procedures. DO NOT perform any examination or procedure on patients based purely on the content of these videos. Geeky Medics accepts no liability for loss of any kind incurred as a result of reliance upon the information provided in this video.

 Achieve success in your medical school OSCEs, UKMLA CPSA, and PLAB 2 exams with our free clinical skills videos. Subscribe to our channel to be informed of our latest releases. 🙂

….

CPSA OSCE Guides https://geekymedics.com/the-clinical-…

 UKMLA AKT Notes https://geekymedics.com/ukmla/

 PLAB 2 OSCE Stations https://geekymedics.com/plab-2-osce-s…

Revise for the Simulated Consultation Assessment (SCA) with our collection of high-quality SCA cases written by GPs and Training Program Directors. Check out our SCA revision cases and prepare for the MRCGP https://geekymedics.com/sca-cases-ban…”

All the notes associated with the videos are similar so I won’t repeat them for the other videos in this article. (Regular readers will be familiar with the style from previous blog articles about this channel).

This video is a little over three minutes long so barely enough to whet the appetite. It begins with startup music (which frankly it does not need). As usual, it is the voice here that is excellent. This one does feature equipment noises, but fortunately the background noise is muted to the extent that it is not noticeable.

In the examination phase there are, in fact, extended periods of silence which I actually found quite restful.

In common with previous OSCE videos there are on-screen medical notes for medical students. Of course, these are of no interest to us. There is funky tail end music which is loud, distracting, and unwelcome to ASMR listeners. Sadly, in my case, the end of the video heralded a loud pumping advert as well.

Axillary Lymph Node Palpation – OSCE Guide | Clip

This one is one- and three-quarter minutes so there isn’t going to be much time to note a great deal. I think in this case they have actually slowed the video right down. But they still found time for the startup music, sadly. This time there is excessive background hiss in the moments of interaction interspersed by absolute silence. Again, there are on screen medical notes, and, again, the tail-end music is unwelcome and loud.

Head & Neck Lymph Node Palpation – OSCE Guide | Clip

This one is less than one and a half minutes. It has startup music, limited interaction, during which time there is an extensive background hiss that sounds like something from a 1980s cassette recorder.

The music remains at each end and, of course, the shorter the video, the more of the time given to that video is proportionately taken up with that music.

Monofilament Assessment of the Foot – OSCE Guide | Clip

This is a little over one minute and twenty seconds. Music as before, background noise seems a little more muted but is most definitely there. I would say that these shorter videos are extracted from much longer videos that I have reviewed before. I suspect that you get more ASMR bang for your listening buck by sticking with the much longer ones. (It would not be such a problem if the top and tail music interludes did not exist.)

Schober’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

This is the same length as the previous one. The participants are the same, the music is the same. The background noise is the same. Again, there is silence between the periods of verbal interaction but I found these moments to be quite welcome. It’s a shame that the videos this week have been so short. I think it is a sign that we are running out of new Geeky Medics videos and very soon we will not be returning to this channel any longer.

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

The Geeky Medics 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 DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

A bit of shock this week. Fresh from a recent Procrastination Pen article discussing Melatonin as a sleep aid, an article describing the concerns about it and why it is not available off-prescription in the UK.

Daytime drowsiness is certainly something I have found, but I reasoned that compared to a night with minimal sleep it was not that terrible a side effect.

I leave it up to you to do your own personal risk-assessment, no doubt taking into account how badly your insomnia is affecting you.

Today’s Calm track is again, taken from the Calm Dailies rather than from tracks dedicated to sleep. That will probably continue for a while. Quite a lot of the material that organisations seem to think assist with sleep do not seem to work for me at all. That might be why I often find myself on the sofa watching dirge TV in the early hours rather than listening to “restful” music tracks.

The Calm track is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/Wi1C26rnLi

Daily Calm

Bird by Bird

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

It is an excellent guide to taking each thing in its time. It comes from one of my favourite voices on Calm, Tamara Levitt. It seems certainly worth the few minutes it takes on the assumption that you have a Calm subscription, that is.

On the day I am looking at it, Calm seems to be priced at £39.99 a year (in the UK anyway). I can’t argue it is good value; indeed, I would not try to sell it to you. If it fits with the kind of material you would normally listen to, I leave it up to you to assess whether you want to spend that.

Established readers will know that for a little while (in the history of blog articles on the Procrastination Pen) I break off now to review a professional ASMR artist and to subject them to laser-focused critique. After all, they are setting themselves up as the pinnacle that ASMR can achieve.

Of late it has been a little disappointing, as I am finding the genuine ASMR artist’s videos have the shortcomings of the inadvertent ASMR videos. In addition, there will be a great deal of self-promotion and advertising thrown in.

I’m sure that I just haven’t found the real quality material yet and, any day now, an artist of truly awesome ability will dumbfound me.

Well, I live in hope.

Today’s video is this one:

ASMR POV You Visit the Sleep Clinic – Medical Exam for Insomnia

It is a little over thirty four minutes and so quite substantial, but we have noted of late that these professional ASMR artists do tend to produce videos of a healthy length.

Of course it has notes: “40,406 views 15 Aug 2025 #ASMR

🔔 *Don’t forget to subscribe* for more ASMR roleplays and relaxation content! Hit the notification bell to stay updated on our latest videos.

Thank you for watching, and I hope this ASMR experience brings you peace and comfort! 🥰

#ASMR

⤖ INSTAGRAM   / sophiemichellegoodall 

BUSINESS ENQUIRES: sophiemichelle_asmr@outlook.com

Lots of love x”

Refreshingly short notes there, and for a change it does not try to sell me anything.

It is from the channel SophieMichelle ASMR, this has seven hundred and three videos and 645K subscribers – crikey.

I am no longer commenting on attractiveness of artists, I’ll let you know if I come across someone of average appearance.

Of course, this channel features on the ASMR Index. I realise I am giving that site a mass of free promotion, feel free to ignore this…

It starts with music, but this is so subdued I think that you’ll barely notice it. The voice as you would expect is perfect, although as we have come to anticipate, veers a little too closely to whispery to be really believable (in a realistic medical context in any case).

There are comments and, given this is an ASMR artist, these have the halo of pleasantness so infrequently found elsewhere on YouTube.

I am not into rubber glove noises, I don’t find clucking sounds that appealing, and I find beeping from equipment to be off-putting. Against that, there is no air conditioning noise, noises from an adjacent road, or people talking in nearby rooms. There are, in addition, no noises from the moving of heavy equipment. I wouldn’t expect any of these in a professional ASMR video but sadly, some of them have decided to include one or more of those sounds.

There are crackling/crinkly noises, noises from paper/page turning and from the rustling of clothing. There are tapping noises, which I find wake me up if anything.  I suspect some ASMR devotees are rather fond of one or more of these sounds. I am about the voice. This one is excellent. It does make me wonder how much of a medical-themed video this is. I have wondered this in connection with hair brushing in other videos, which seemed out of place other than to maximise ASMR “triggers”. I have the same suspicion here too.

Moving on to inadvertent ASMR videos (mostly medical videos – at least so far).

This week we are back to a channel that has featured multiple times on this blog here, here, here and also here.  It is Geeky Medics. The videos so far have featured Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh and so below.

The dedication to this site has been because the videos there seem to be of a reasonably consistent quality (given that they are inadvertent ASMR videos in any case).

Of course, some readers will not have read the previous articles so I should mention that Dr Lewis Potter is the founder of Geeky Medics. The videos will all have notes that are similar (this has been established in those past blog articles). However, in order to cover the notes for new readers I will give a precis version with the first video.

How to Feel a Pulse | Radial & Brachial Pulses – OSCE Guide

A sample of the notes with the video: “120,381 views  16 Jul 2022  Cardiovascular OSCE Guides | UKMLA | CPSA | PLAB | MRCS

This video demonstrates how to assess upper limb pulses in an OSCE station including:

    Introduction 00:00

    Radial pulse 00:06

    Brachial pulse 00:30

You can read our guide to peripheral vascular examination here: https://geekymedics.com/peripheral-va…

Check out our other awesome clinical skills resources including:

• 🔥 Geeky Medics Bundles (discounted products): https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• ✨ 1000+ OSCE Stations: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 🏥 Geeky Medics OSCE Revision Book: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 📝 150+ PDF OSCE Checklists: https://geekymedics.com/pdf-osce-chec…

• 🗂️ 3000+ OSCE Flashcards: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 📱 Geeky Medics OSCE App: https://geekymedics.com/geeky-medics-..

• 🩺 Medical Finals SBA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 💊 PSA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know about our latest content: https://geekymedics.com/newsletter/ ✉️”

This video is a little less than one and a half minutes and yet sadly, it still finds time to squeeze in some startup music. It seems to be one of a sequence of short guides taken from earlier videos. I suppose that in some cases the advantage is that it avoids some of the less desirable noises.

The presentation is quiet, apart from a constant background hiss. The voice is nicely measured and calm.

Sadly, it concludes with more obtrusive music…

Lower Limb Pulses – OSCE Guide

I won’t put the notes in again, they are all similar. This is a little over two minutes and again has the same two participants. All of these videos would be improved by the removal of the music, of course. This is another short guide and I would say it is taken from a much longer video. (In fact, most probably one I have already reviewed – see the above blog articles for details). It is a lovely slow presentation and the voice is as good as in the previous video. The background noise is as before, and I think I’d be safe in saying it is going to be present in every one of these videos.

Neck Lump Examination – OSCE Guide

This one is nearly four minutes long. This time I do not think I have seen the content before. The background noise is, if anything worse than before. There are lots of on-screen sentences which provide guidance for medical students but, of course, these are not of interest to us in the slightest.

I would say that without the music, a string of these shorter videos chained together would be excellent night time – fall-asleep – material. Sadly though what with music and inter-video adverts, I am including them in the Procrastination Pen playlist under strict review. I maybe binning them in the future if they prove to be excessively intrusive.

I think I will make the next one the last one, to prevent this blog post stretching on too long.

It is this one:

Percussion & Auscultation of the Lungs – OSCE Guide | Clip

I am pretty certain this is a subsection of an earlier video. It is four minutes long and it contains breathing noises. These are intrusive and unwelcome and I think this means it can be discounted from the Procrastination Pen playlist.

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

The Geeky Medics 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 DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

With articles clamouring about the necessity of getting more sleep to avoid dementia, one can hardly ignore the warnings about insomnia. Get to sleep on time day in day out. Sleep a good eight hours. Do not wake up in the early hours of the morning…

Scant succour to anyone who struggles to get the allotted sleep hours and seems to have an internal clock that wages war against the working day. If you are such a person, welcome. Even if you bounce into bed and fall instantly to sleep, welcome. Perhaps you can provide a contrast to any that are suffering for sleep.

The Procrastination Pen is a resource for those that find ASMR useful as a relaxation aid and potentially a sleep aid as well. For quite a while now it has focused on YouTube as a source of free YouTube videos. Indeed, within YouTube, there are a number of playlists linked to the Procrastination Pen, some of which are designed to assist in this regard.

There is also a weekly article which attempts to find a further video which may prove useful in this respect. This is one such article.

I have also taken out a Calm subscription in the hope that some of the material there might be useful for sleep. (Some of it is helpful, but that doesn’t mean you should all hammer over to the Calm website and lay down your spending loot).

I have also found that a number of audiobooks are helpful if you find yourself lying awake. I personally have enjoyed some of the Miss Marple recordings on CD. This is just because I prefer this approach to a subscription (because I am old). I also am getting tired of the nature of adverts online, in that they have become so intrusive that they now detract from the actual material.

Script blockers are helpful against some of them. A pi-hole (should you be so disposed) can help against others. So far, there is no assistance that I have found with YouTube adverts (I am told that they are incorporated into the stream and so cannot be separated from the videos themselves). However, technology keeps improving so I am certain that someone will crack that problem one of these days…

Meantime, you can subscribe to YouTube if you feel it to be of sufficient value. I’m not sure to what extent it obviates intrusive adverts. One would hope, absolutely.

Alternatively (and I’m sure that it is heavily frowned upon, so I dare not recommend it). I see that certain YouTube downloading softwares will download an entire playlist locally enabling you to bypass the adverts in their entirety. Again, I don’t recommend it. Given it affects a company’s revenue, I can guarantee somebody official in a very expensive suit will be quite upset if I did recommend anything of the sort, so I don’t.

However, if you decide to ignore my advice and download the entire Procrastination Pen playlist, then do feedback what it sounded like and any improvements you would like to hear.

Calm today was very inspirational; it was in fact so energising that I am not clear whether it will be soporific-inducing. I’ll risk it as I rather like Jay Shetty, and I enjoyed the material.

Daily Jay

Chase the Future You

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

https://www.calm.com/app/player/Ga3PYvH2pG

If you have a Calm subscription, give it a spin and see what you think.

I have been, recently, evaluating a professional ASMR artist in these articles, rather as a counterfoil to the inadvertent ASMR material that I prefer. Today we have:

ASMR Head to Toe Exam [Real Person] Medical Assessment | Cranial Nerve, Feet, Scalp, Abdomen Tingles 

This is a little less than forty minutes. One thing we have found with professional ASMR artists is that one tends to get a substantial video. This can be great, but sadly sometimes just means that it seems to go on, and on, and on…

KatieASMR is the channel and this has 415K subscribers (which is a fine achievement I’m sure you will agree). Of course, KatieASMR features in the ASMR Index. We can almost take that as a given nowadays. That ASMR Index site seems to do sterling work, this little blog could aspire so high…

The video has notes: “91,191 views 24 Apr 2025 #relax #asmr #asmrvideo

In this video I give Joyce a head-to-toe exam!  This real person role play includes soft spoken tingles to help you relax and sleep. Please enjoy and consider being a patron ❤️‍🔥

Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/user?u=80985362

TikTok:   / katieasmr00 

For Business Inquiries: ilovekatieasmr@gmail.com”

Brave putting an email address down I would have thought, as is the decision to permit comments against the video. That said, professional ASMR artists seem to have great loyalty in the comments department and so here. A definite absence of negative and downright nasty.

Of course, again, the participants are attractive in fact it is so common it is barely worth mentioning. If I come across a video with an unattractive guy in his fifties doing ASMR a) it will probably be me b) the comments will most likely be of a calibre that would dissolve rust.

As usual we find that there is background noise, in this video it is rather loud too. An interesting choice for a professional ASMR video. There are also noises coming from outside of the room, potentially from a nearby road.

As we’ve come to expect the participants are vying towards the whispery style of presentation. I suspect that this makes for great ASMR but poor believability. Although if my GP whispers at me the next time I visit, I will at least know that he reads the Procrastination Pen.

As the video advances the background noise drops off, and we get the time to admire the cute dog who is remarkably quiet. There are various intestinal noises, and I’m not convinced featuring them was intentional. It does however, make the presentation a bit more realistic.

Also realistic is the inability of the “patient” to pass the smell test. I have wondered how people manage to distinguish certain smells when challenged. This just proves the test is not as easy as some other videos would have us believe.

The combing (of hair) section I am now convinced appeals to ASMR aficionados that get their ASMR sensations from the sound that comes from combing hair. I’ve come across it before and it never seems to belong in the video. I therefore think it must be included through popular demand…

Sadly, the video is interposed with adverts which appear to pop in at five-minute intervals and, as usual, YouTube does not seem to be selecting them for their restful content, quite the opposite in fact.

The personal attention, of course, is exact. The pace is more or less perfect. I got to like the whispered approach in this one as well.

Anyway, it is worthy of a review I think. Give it a try and tell me what you think.

Moving on to the part of the blog that started the review process all those months ago; the locating of, and the review of inadvertent ASMR videos and to date this has mainly consisted of videos on a medical theme.

This week we are back to a channel that has featured multiple times on this blog here and here and indeed here.  It is of course Geeky Medics. The videos so far have featured Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh.

However, at this point the videos are more recently posted and hence there have been some changes. The first such video is this one:

Peripheral Vascular Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)

The video notes are all pretty much the same but given some people may not have read those earlier blog posts, I’ll feature the ones associated with this video in precis form, in any case, so that you get an idea:

“444,692 views 14 Jun 2022 Cardiovascular OSCE Guides | UKMLA | CPSA | PLAB | MRCS

This video provides a demonstration of how to perform a peripheral vascular examination in an OSCE station including assessment of key pulses (e.g. radial, brachial, femoral, posterior tibial, dorsalis pedis). Read our guide alongside the video here: https://geekymedics.com/peripheral-va… Check out our other awesome clinical skills resources including: • 🔥 Geeky Medics Bundles (discounted products): https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • ✨ 1000+ OSCE Stations: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • 🏥 Geeky Medics OSCE Revision Book: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • 📝 150+ PDF OSCE Checklists: https://geekymedics.com/pdf-osce-chec… • 🗂️ 3000+ OSCE Flashcards: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • 📱 Geeky Medics OSCE App: https://geekymedics.com/geeky-medics-… • 🩺 Medical Finals SBA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • 💊 PSA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…”

The startup music on this video is different to that in the videos reviewed in the earlier blog posts. However, it is equally loud and equally unwelcome. The participants seem identical to those in the previous blog posts – I mean in appearance as well as identity. It is as if no time had elapsed between those videos posted some time previously and the more up to date ones featured here. I’ll make a guess that earlier videos have been sampled to create shorter videos focused on a specific subject. Perhaps this is a posting of some left-over older footage.

This video is just over seven minutes in length and so is not huge. However, it is a more substantial video than some we have featured from this channel.

Comments are permitted and we know what that means by now. The commentators are beginning to notice that this pairing has been around for a while.  Cue some comments about age and believability. However, surprisingly comments are predominantly positive.

Either there is a great resource of older material which they can keep plundering or James and Andrew are the most diligent pair I’ve encountered in a long time.

Dr Lewis Potter is the founder of Geeky Medics. He is at Newcastle University and it seems sensible therefore to conclude that the filming was completed there. So, we have a where, and a who, but not necessarily a when. However, I think Poirot can safely go back to bed.

There is background noise – I would say it is more the level of a recording hiss than of air conditioning. In my opinion Andrew has the better voice in this one. It is a good voice too (it must be why I keep returning to this channel then).

The examination is calm and well-paced and it takes mere moments to feel relaxed. Shame about that startup music though and the fact that the music comes again at the end of the video. Perhaps surprisingly, the seven minutes were not interrupted by random adverts whilst I was watching. YouTube made up for it as soon as the video concluded though.

Diabetic Foot Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)

There seems to have been a surge of posting of videos on Geeky medics in 2022. This is another one from that year. As I mentioned there is no point in reiterating the notes here. James and Andrew feature again and I am pretty sure this is a rehash of some older material. The commentators are convinced of that as well. A number of comments focusing on the apparent Peter Pan nature of the participants.

This video is just over five minutes in length and the format is exactly as before (except for the startup music). By now we are used to periods of absolute silence in the video– it is quite a restful approach. We are now used to the voices and remain on safe ground in terms of level, presentation and pace. In this one the background hiss seems more intermittent. There are periods when it actually seems quite a bit quieter.

Sadly, there is still concluding music – shame it doesn’t avoid music altogether.

Measuring Jugular Venous Pressure (JVP) – OSCE Guide (Clip)

This one is just one and a quarter minutes, long so don’t blink. There are various negative comments – so far so normal YouTube, including this time I notice some dissent about the use of the term “tummy”. Crikey, people are fascinated by details.

It features James and Andrew and by now we are used to how it goes. Despite the shortness of the video they still find time to slot in startup music – grrr. Then they go and finish with music as well. Still, that was the perfect introduction to a very loud advert in my case.

Rinne & Weber Test – OSCE Guide (Clip)

This one is a little over two minutes long and has the same two participants as before. I have many more videos on this channel to review but I think I will stop it here for fear of posting a humongous long post. Given how consistent this channel has proven to be I think that I will be back here again (perhaps on several occasions). Notes remain similar, comments remain similar including the fact that people are noticing that Andrew should have aged a good deal more by now (In the comments). It isn’t long enough to provide much in the way of material of course (in common with several other videos on this channel).

It still has startup music of course more’s the pity. I think Andrew has a great voice and I assume someone will chain these together without music and put it up on YouTube somewhere. I don’t usually like such videos but in this case I might be prepared to give it a try if I come across it.

They also publish a guide to these tests if it is of interest. (I’m assuming most people reading this blog are not medical students so I would guess not…

The Geeky Medics 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 article why not subscribe to this blog:

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

Recently I have been including a cameo role for a professional ASMR artist. I’ve limited my adventurings to videos where they are playing a medical professional to fit in with the ongoing blog theme, which has focused on medical-themed ASMR videos for well over a year now.

Once a person strays into this area though, you very quickly realise that there are a huge number of medical-themed ASMR videos and the scope for spending hours on really quite unsuitable videos is commensurately high.

After trying a few, I also happened upon another hazard which is that the first several minutes of the video is given over to the junk the sponsor of the video wants to sell. Quite a lot of heinous-instantly-disposables in such videos. It convinces me that any video organised this way is unlikely to get much space on this blog. There is quite enough intrusive time given over to advertising as it is, without it forming a part of the video itself.

This one seems to escape some of these problems:

ASMR Head to Toe Assessment 2024 [Full Body Medical Examination] | ‘Unintentional Style’ Roleplay

Sadly, there is the ever-present air conditioning noise which I would think a professional ASMR artist could ensure was dispensed with. There are also some equipment noises, including some loudish beeps, whirring equipment and clunks from moving equipment around. This is rather like many of the genuine medical videos we have reviewed. There is the sound of rubber gloves which is quite off-putting. The video is a little over forty minutes so quite substantial and as expected the tone of the presentation is nigh on perfect. In this case two recognised ASMR artists are collaborating so in a sense it is two for one in that both voices here are excellent (if they weren’t then the number of subscribers would be something of a surprise).

The channel is Ivy B ASMR it has 350K subscribers and 1.9K videos so someone deeply loves this ASMR artist (or rather quite a number of someones).

So, well worthy of consideration, I think. I will place it into the sweetie jar list. However, bear in mind this list does not receive anything like the attention of the main Procrastination Pen playlist as it has not been the focus of this blog (at least so far).

So, after that brief sojourn into videos created deliberately for ASMR, back to the inadvertent ASMR video and, perhaps the slightly more difficult task of finding a video with potentially relaxing effects amongst the large number of videos which are unsuitable.

Today, we return to Stanford, which has been a rich well of restful videos.

Venous Testing

This is just a little over five minutes in length, so blink and it is already gone. It is a professional video and so, as we would expect, there are notes. “4 Jul 2012

Visit: stanfordmedicine25.stanford.edu

This video is from the Stanford Medicine 25: an initiative to enhance the culture of bedside medicine and physical diagnosis. Visit our website to learn more. The ankle brachial index is one of our “25” diagnostic techniques that we teach.”

There are no ASMR-related comments and quite frequently this means it isn’t a desperately great video.

It starts with the standard Stanford musical intro (boo hiss). The medical professional is John Cooke MD and John has an excellent voice. There is a slight background hiss which is unfortunate, but nothing as bad as some of the air conditioning we have heard.

There is a doppler device in use which some people might find off-putting. The noises from this device seem to get louder and more explosive as the video goes on. There is also the standard Stanford end music as well.

We have visited the Stanford Medicine 25 channel prior to this and we know that the videos tend to be divided into playlists.

This video comes from the playlist Stanford Medicine 25: Ankle Brachial Index. There is only one other video in this playlist, and it is this one:

Ankle Brachial Index (ABI) Test: How to Perform

The notes do not introduce anything substantially new. This one is also presented by John; this time the video is seven- and three-quarter minutes long. There are comments and this time, the odd one might be ASMR-related (the comments as usual are variable). John continues to have a great voice in this video. But we know what is coming when the doppler device is produced again.

The doppler device does produce the odd distracting noise. This is a shame because I do like John’s voice and the pacing of the presentation. It is only because of this that I am considering running with these two in the playlist to begin with. Sadly it is quite likely that both will ultimately get culled for the archive list.

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.

Picture DeepAI.org

Sleeping With ASMR

For a little while, I have been reviewing a professional ASMR artist with the understanding that as they have set themselves up to produce ASMR material, that material had better be top notch. That is, I am disposed to be more critical of such videos than I would be of a similar inadvertent ASMR video.

This one caught my eye because it is seeking to emulate the very type of video that I habitually review i.e. the inadvertent ASMR video:

ASMR Head to Toe Medical Exam | Cranial Nerves, Physical Assessment | “Unintentional” Style

It is not completely quiet I notice; there are equipment noises, background noises, noises from participants moving around and using medical equipment. In all, not as quiet as I would expect for a professional video. The voices are of course as close to perfect as you can achieve and we’d expect that. It is setting its stall by the ASMR flag after all.

It is odd to find the participants whispering, but not unwelcome in the scheme of things. It does make the occasional noise seem louder than it would do otherwise.

The video is just under forty four minutes and so quite long compared to a lot of the inadvertent ASMR material we have been reviewing of late.

There are notes “308,882 views 16 Nov 2024 #asmrunintentional #asmrmedical #asmrheadtotoe

Let me know if you can spot the surprise towards the end!!! ASMR Head To Toe Medical Exam | Cranial Nerves, Physical Assessment | “Unintentional” Style

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This is an ASMR medical role-play, I’m not a real doctor and if you have a medical condition please consult with your physician. This video does not display accurate information therefore none of the information should be taken as accurate/truthful facts.

#asmrheadtotoe  #asmrunintentional #asmrmedical”

The channel is MAD P ASMR. This has 603K subscribers and 940 videos (no one need say that ASMR is not popular).

I found that MAD P ASMR also has an online review. It is good to see that there are other bloggers involved in a similar area.

As with other professional ASMR artists we have so far seen, the attractiveness of the participants tends to be towards the well above average level and so I remain unclear if it is the quality of the sound that is the main appeal (and quite probably it is not).

There are comments, of course, and surprisingly they predominantly are positive. MAD P ASMR is obviously a well-respected contributor.

As we have seen before in a video of this length, YouTube is going to hammer in advertising as frequently as it can get away with and quite a lot of that advertising is not going to be restful. This is a major downside of using YouTube for this kind of material.

Around the twenty-seven-minute mark the video continues but one of the participants has left and a new one has joined. That seems odd and usually I would have thought this the perfect cue to start a whole new video.

I’ll refer to this as the second half of the video (although it’s more like the final seventeen minutes) and it seemed to me to start a little louder. However, this, for me, makes it seem a bit more realistic as all the whispering did not seem the kind of thing your average medical professional commonly engages in. The voices are still muted and probably still much too whispery to be considered a model of real life medical professional behaviour.

At least the part where the patient is talking but the medical professional is just typing into a computer seems representative of real life. (I’m not certain the typing noises are exactly what I would call restful though).

There are various unwrapping noises, which perhaps some people will find appealing. They don’t really appeal to me that much. There also seems to be a quite elevated set of blood pressure instrument noises. The sound of palpating the back sounded more like someone hitting a drum, so I am not sure how the microphone was set up for this.

In the final moments the medical professional starts spraying the back of the “patient” with something which appears to have a glitter-like substance in it. A bit surreal for a medical exam.

In all though, this just adds up to my being extra critical because this is a professional ASMR video after all. I still think it is worthy of review and I am going to add it into the Sweetie Jar list.

Well, that has been a somewhat lengthy diversion from the real meat-and-potatoes work of this blog which is to find inadvertent ASMR videos. (i.e. real videos which may have some relaxing effects rather than ASMR professionals playing doctors and nurses).

Today’s material follows on from an earlier blog post. In this, I introduced the Geeky Medics channel and we got to see videos featuring Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh.

My preferred method for refining which videos we would review from the channel was to look for videos that featured James.

This led to a very long blog post and enough extra videos for several more blog posts besides. I arbitrarily divided them up for part 1 and this is part 2.

Hip Joint Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)

There is startup music but different startup music to the videos we saw in the last article. James is in for another examination with Andrew. This time all kinds of leg manipulations are seen but what we hear is similarly quiet and methodical to all those videos that went before.

As we saw in the previous article there are notes – but I won’t repeat them here. Comments are permitted and as before some of those comments are not fully helpful.

This video is just over four and a half minutes. It is so speedy that it is hardly there at all. There is of course background (air conditioning) noise. It is almost rude to have a video without it. Although when it does happen, it is so – so welcome.

Knee Joint Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)

The video is six and three quarter minutes this time and if you read the previous article, this video will be familiar. (Some elements of the video are obviously just repetitions of filming completed for other videos).

Selecting James as a method of thinning out videos has resulted in a sample of a good percentage of the videos on the website. Overall, this will bulk out the playlist (which really wasn’t the aim).

In order not to tax your reading patience, I think six videos is going to be sufficient for this article.

Dix-Hallpike Test & Epley Manoeuvre – OSCE Guide

This is just under two and a half minutes so it is not hanging around this one. Andrew and James appear again but James appears different and the video is posted much more recently up to now the videos have been six years old but this one is a slimline five years ago.

The new startup music is firmly established and dogging the start of the videos. Andrew’s voice seems to be at a higher volume for some reason and the background hiss a little more established.

Here we have Mr Ben Cosway as ENT Registrar for the first time in the credits at the end of the video as “Reviewer”.

Lymphoreticular Examination – OSCE Guide (lymph node, spleen and liver examination)

This one is a little over four- and three-quarter minutes in length. Startup music, tick, Andrew and James, tick, hissing background noise, tick, initial pre-amble, tick, move onto actual examination, tick, (of which a fair amount is actually in silence – heaven be praised no background noises). In summary, it is just like those we have already seen.

This time the reviewer is Dr Adam Gibb Clinical research fellow in Lymphoma, he seems to be at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust which is in Manchester.

Subcutaneous Injection (SC injection) – OSCE Guide

This one is not brilliant if injections are really not your thing (don’t watch!) It is just two- and three-quarter minutes in length. Andrew and James continue their merry dance across the screen. (To be fair it has all been relaxing so far, apart from the odd extraneous noise in videos which we can afford to dismiss from the playlist, given the resource of videos on this channel is just so large).

Otoscopy and Hearing Assessment | Ear Examination | Rinne’s & Weber’s test | OSCE Guide

I’ll make this the last video in this blog article but there are quite a few more for a future article or articles. It is slightly more than three-and-a-quarter minutes so none of the videos today will waylay you for very extortionate periods of time. It features Andrew and James again, the Morecombe and Wise of medical examinations. There is whispering, so I take it all back, medical examinations really do feature whispering, but perhaps not for the entire length of the examination.

There are a few disturbing ear related images, but as you will be listening rather than watching, you should be well placed.

The Geeky Medics 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.

Picture DeepAI.org