This week, for the first time in a while, I went to a car show, these mainly consist of a bunch of old blokes (or more often women nowadays) standing in a windswept field chewing the cud over which barely polished patch of rust is preferable to another one. It takes me back to where the blog began where I used to review cars, but discovered, rather early on, that I know nothing about cars and suffered a crisis of conscience in that were there not more well qualified people to write about cars than I. To which the answer had to be yes.
Today I write about sleep, and are there not more people qualified to write about sleep than I am. Absolutely. However, now we are in a world where much of the Internet is written by AI, is consumed by AI and is regurgitated by AI as fact.
In such a world I think that we all, however we struggle to create, can make a difference simply by creating some content for the Internet that is not regurgitated output from an AI. At least that is what I tell myself.
I have been trying to pay attention to an online sleep course. (It’s another pay for thing so I will not bother telling you which one). I am in the early stages but I think I can pass along a few titbits.
For example, catching up on sleep is a fallacy. If you get a bad night’s sleep attempting to sleep in to cover off the loss is not only ineffective, it is damaging to the sleep cycle. (This relies on good sleep habits being repeated night after night).
In addition, if there is sleep loss across the week, sleeping in at the weekend just does not cut it. Additional napping also tends to impact your sleep cycle and so is best avoided.
Watching a distracting video is actually unhelpful (apparently) and may keep you awake for longer. If you already have a sleep problem then saving the bed only for sleep is best.
(I must admit that I find the opposite, which is why this blog exists. Indeed, in emergencies, I have been known to come downstairs and listen to the TV drone on in order to get to sleep.
The old advice regarding blue light keeps being intoned as a great source of wisdom. But I read some time ago that the study on which that information was based used levels of blue light substantially higher than the average person is likely to be subjected to, such that the blue light is unlikely to be the problem. More problematic, by far, is to interact with services (such as social media) that have been designed to keep you engaged. That five minutes to check up on a post can easily become a couple of hours.
The amount of sleep that you need is often higher than you think, with people stating that on average they survive on six hours sleep a night but needing somewhere between seven to nine hours. You will know when you have hit the magic number when you stop feeling tired all day (I certainly have not got there yet).
A number of courses still state that as you age you need less sleep. I have banged on about this for a while so regular readers will know, as you age your sleep is likely to be more disrupted but the average number of hours sleep that you need does not change. The average still remains between seven to nine hours even in old age.
Most people report problems with sleep. In recent surveys; they report tiredness in the daytime (a possible sign of lack of sleep).
Lack of sleep affects you physically, true, but also mentally including memory, judgement and problem-solving.
After all that sleep related info, let’s look at this week’s Calm recommendation:
The Calm item this week is:
https://www.calm.com/app/player/MyrEmf4gT2
Daily Trip
==========
The Battle to Win Ourselves
—————————
### NARRATOR
Jeff Warren
### AUTHOR
Jeff Warren
Meditation can help us manage the warring parts of ourselves; it makes it easier to integrate them. The part that notices the battle is not in the battle; we get more freedom by noticing the battle and backing up to watch it.
Bear in mind that this material (on Calm) is not free and so you will need to subscribe if you want to listen to it.
Following on from my promise to locate some material which was not on YouTube and therefore not subject to advertising, I take you back to Greater Good (I have written about this site a few times on this blog previously).
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts/item/happiness_break_a_meditation_to_move_through_anger
Happiness Break: A Meditation to Move Through Anger
“July 09, 2026 | 7:25
Try a practice in accepting difficult feelings like anger or irritation to help keep your cool, feel better overall, and find calm with contemplative social scientist Eve Ekman. “
This material is free; it isn’t obviously downloadable but it does not seem to require an account to listen to it. Looking at the transcript I would say that it is right on message for this blog. Additionally, I rather like Eve’s voice in this.
Recently I have been trying to focus on older ASMR videos because I am perverse and YouTube seems to insist I watch something more up to date.
I came across this one:
ASMR Annual Physical Exam Part 1
It is from a channel I was not previously familiar with which is Fairy Char ASMR 457k subscribers, five hundred and twelve, videos, forty seven playlists
Of which this one would seem to be firmly on theme for this blog:
The notes on the channel are unusually brief for a professional ASMR artist: “Fairy Char ASMR
Description
Relaxation // Sleep // Tingles
Hi everyone, my name is Char! I make ASMR videos. I have an assortment of medical, spa, beauty and many more roleplays to help trigger your ASMR.
Links
Patreon ♥patreon.com/fairychar
Instagraminstagram.com/fairycharasmr
YTMember ♥youtube.com/channel/UCn622AJ6EcQLwpltrYJR8lw/join
👕 T-Shirts & Stickers 👚teespring.com/stores/fairy-char
Tiktoktiktok.com/@fairycharasmr
facebookfacebook.com/fairycharasmr”
The notes on the video equally so: “808,615 views 12 Jul 2016
Hi everyone, thank you for watching and supporting my videos. Please like, comment and subscribe!
Love,
Charlotte
✨My Instagram: / fairycharasmr
✨ PATREON (To support my channel): https://bit.ly/3eUuDmh
✨ YouTube Membership (Supports my channel): https://bit.ly/3f1bSxu
✨ My Props: https://amzn.to/2YbABJv
✨ CHARITIES: https://teespring.com/stores/fairy-char
✨MY HANDMADE TINGLE BRACELETS: hellofairychar@gmail.com
✉️ :
For BUSINESS INQUIRIES: hellofairychar@gmail.com
❤️❤️ Thank you for supporting my videos on Patreon ❤️❤️: Fuinlai, Samantha, Kapil, Kamar, Bill, Cody, Blake, Constance, Ray, David R, Lucinda, Stephanie, Patricia, Jordan G, Keith S, Les is more, Holly, Freedam, Tingles, Dr. Bill, Iris H, Jason V, Jake L, Brandon, Daniel B, Caleb, DarthMark, Emmanuel, GhostyGrimy, TnT, lalabeanx”.
Comments are permitted. There are a lot of those, a number of them are borderline surreal which seems more or less normal for YouTube.
The video is twenty-seven and a half minutes. It starts without music (indeed initially the artist is not on screen and the video is silent). When Char appears, we realise that she is very quiet. I pushed the volume up a bit, but straight away we find this is going to major on the whispery – so far so normal. Although I have pointed out my preference before for the non-whispery ones (not least because they are a lot rarer).
There are keyboard sounds, equipment sounds (items being moved off-camera). There are glove-related sounds (not my favourite). Plastic related noises (loud). Blood pressure cuff related noises (quite loud). There is the odd breathy moment (not too extensive). There are various off camera rather loud noises – clunks, squeaks, clicks, scratches, none of those are that appealing. There’s a tuning fork noise (these are habitually loud; in fact, the best video I heard was where they mentioned the tuning fork and then muted the actual sound altogether).
I do like the voice; I do like the pace. The keyboard sounds are none too intrusive. There is no background noise (that I could discern). It would be better without some of those extraneous noises but I still think it worthy of a review. Why not listen for yourself.
The inadvertent ASMR this week comes from a channel that has been covered so many times by this blog I probably should charge advertising fees (if Stanford are reading, that was humour).
Stanford Medicine 25 seems to have a consistent level of delivery much of it not only great (I assume) for medical training but also reasonably good for our purposes as well. 349k subscribers, one hundred and thirty-two videos, seventeen playlists.
Today’s is tiny being only a little over four and a half minutes in length. The notes are:”68,748 views 22 Jan 2016
From our dermatology series, this video covers all the basics you need to accurately describe complex and multiple skin lesions.
The Stanford Medicine 25 program for bedside medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine aims to promote the culture of bedside medicine to make current and future clinicians and other healthcare provides better at the art of physical diagnosis and more confident at the bedside of their patients.
Visit us:
Website: http://stanfordmedicine25.stanford.edu/
Blog: http://stanford25blog.stanford.edu/
Facebook: / stanfordmedic. .
Twitter: / stanfordmed25
Google+: http://goo.gl/UBM7SP
Watch all videos from our dermatology series:
Approach to the Dermatology Exam: • Approach to the Dermatology Exam (Stanford…
Approach to Multiple Rashes: • Approach to Multiple Rashes (Stanford Medi…
Approach to Nevi (Moles): • Approach to Nevi (Moles) – Stanford Medici…
Diagnosing Acne vs. Rosacea: • Diagnosing Acne vs. Rosacea (Stanford Medi… “
So moderately extensive notes. No doubt I will be covering some of those other videos in future blog articles.
Bernice Kwong is the medical professional.
Approach to Multiple Rashes (Stanford Medicine 25)
The video starts with music which, as regular readers will know, is not my favourite thing and unfortunately that music seems to go on a bit. When trying to sleep I find music distracting and prefer videos not to have it. I have looked into playlists containing videos that have the play time truncated to remove the start and end music. However, I have not yet been able to make that work. No doubt a technical switch that I failed to include.
When Bernice starts to talk, we find that she has a great voice, nicely quiet, nicely paced. But sadly, there is background music that persists throughout the video. That is just too bad as Bernice could have been a great candidate for an ASMR person but the music really is quite distracting. I wonder at the decision to include it as, surely, it isn’t much of an aid to focus for eager students either. To add insult to injury, there is even more music at the tail end of this video. Definitely one for people who like music with their videos.
I’ll trial this in the Procrastination Pen playlist but I have a feeling this is one that is likely to get the boot to the archive list sooner rather than later. Shame.
So just one this week. I wish you well in your drive to get more sleep.
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
The Procrastination Pen 