Recently I have been thinking about the various ways that I have tried to assist sleep over the years. Some of those have, of course, been chemical and only one of those was truly effective.
For the briefest of occasions, I did receive genuine-prescribed-by-a-doctor sleeping pills. These definitely work and I seemed to have none of the side effects detailed in the included pieces of paper. However, I suspect they are addictive as the prescription covered a bare few days and then it was back to one’s own devices.
The night before days in the office, I commonly have problems sleeping. For that I have often taken Nytol. Nytol is odd stuff. Some nights I take it and I barely make it upstairs before my eyes are closing. Then I am zonko. Some nights it is as if I have taken a sugar pill and I am laid there counting the marks on the ceiling. I have often wondered if there is some circulation problem in the manufacturing plant and the odd pill has zero active ingredient in it. No doubt the manufacturers of Nytol would have a completely different take on it.
Some years ago, I saw a YouTube presentation by a UK sleep expert who recommended popping a melatonin pill about half an hour before sleep and there would be no need for counting sheep.
The problem being it is almost impossible to get in the UK. I have taken some when travelling in either North or South America (where it is widely available). I found it rather like the Nytol. Sometimes it is as if the doors of sleep have wanged shut all of a sudden and somedays it is as if I had an unhealthy caffeine habit. It has been recommended to take it in association with 5-HTP and I did try that. I’d say the efficacy is improved but marginally in my experience.
I have tried standard Kalms and night-time Kalms, Bach Rescue Remedy and the herbal version of Nytol. These seem to have limited effects other than sometimes the nature of my nightmares were much more vivid and therefore more nightmarish… (However, if you love a good nightmare, it is as nothing compared to St John’s Wort which could win records).
The issue with all such remedies to my mind (and was not shared by the genuine sleeping pills) is that they get you to sleep but do not keep you there. Marvellous being in zzzs land at 9pm. Not so marvellous when you spring wide awake at 3am despite feeling that you have done so from the bed of a river. Worse that, having thus sprung awake, no other remedy is available to get you back off to sleep before the inevitable alarm at 5am.
It was for this reason that I went in search of a soothing backtrack. If I have to lie awake in the early hours of the morning, better to do so calmly and in as relaxed state as I can possibly accomplish than to lie fretting about all the sleep I am not getting.
Most recently I have been using Calm, for this to a greater or lesser degree of efficiency. I am going to start making recommendations from there. I have hesitated only because it is a paid-for option and I hate to leverage people into paying for anything. I am no salesperson and have no ambitions to become one.
Of late, I am making the odd foray into professional ASMR artists in these articles, if only to contrast with the inadvertent ASMR that this blog has specialised in for so long. I haven’t been featuring the many that are frankly awful. (There seem to be a fair few of these). I have the bias that if you set yourself up as a professional ASMR artist, then your offerings should be excellent. At the very least, they should be consistently restful.
Of course, YouTube now has adverts shoehorned into every corner and most of them are about as restful as a thoroughgoing slap.
This video is a foray away from the medical theme that I have stuck with for a long time. Mainly because I am having trouble finding a good one on the medical theme. I thought the tone of this video rather good; you may not share my opinion on it.
ASMR | Night massage with gua sha, herbs, natural oils (soft spoken)
I am always nervous about anything massage in case that is a euphemism for some other kind of video (which hopefully I don’t need to define). Both participants have clothing, excessive skin does not seem to be exposed and there are no offers to see more on an OnlyFans site somewhere.
This is a bit breathy for me but at least it does not seem to involve fingernails on fabric, strange vocal intonations into a microphone or bizarre squelching noises coming from who knows where.
It eschews music (hurrah) but there are some noises coming from brushing hair. (Perhaps that is even your thing, who knows).
Itsblitzz is the channel and it has 840K subscribers and three hundred and eighty videos. I see that there are three playlists. However, beware, some of these videos actively promote certain products. I have made this an attribute which embargoes a video from featuring in this blog. They will start with “the sponsor of the video this week…”. At which point I just move on.
The video is a little over forty-two minutes in length (hopefully enough to get you nodding off) and contains notes:
“29 Jan 2019 #guasha #massage #ASMR
In tonight’s video, I have brought back one of my favorite humans to experiment with some new techniques and tools (our other video can be found here: ASMR | Head massage and energy healin… ). This was a spur of the moment session, and I am happy that Elizabeth was free to come over. She is such an easy person to be around, and everything felt very natural and relaxed. I use some gua sha tools in our session as well as some natural sprays and oils. Gua sha is a skin scraping technique used in traditional East Asian medicine that can also be performed with a spoon or other smooth object. Typically, it leaves marks (petechiae) but tonight I will just be using the tools to aid in massage. I am using light to medium pressure to avoid abrasions. I will demonstrate and discuss other gua sha techniques in the very near future on my channel.”
There are of course comments, and as we have noted, where comments are permitted there shall ye find less than helpful comments. So here too.
Anyway, that was the distraction of the week, onto the main feature which takes us back to the world of YouTube medical videos.
MRCP Paces: Station 1, Neurology section (Upper Limbs)
This is fifteen- and three-quarter minutes long and surprisingly for a video from a hospital has no notes. Less surprisingly it has no comments either. I can probably by now guarantee that if it has ASMR content then ASMR fans have already discovered it.
It features Dr Shuja Punekar who straight away has a good voice. It also features air conditioning noises which are less welcome. It does not have start up music which is great.
The feedback section of the video which occurs at eleven minutes has air conditioning noises akin to the sound of the M25 at rush hour. It is actually loud and would have discounted the video had it been there from the start of the video. It also serves to partially mask the voices of the participants.
This one is from Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust YouTube channel. There are five hundred and fourteen videos, twenty-six playlists (one with one hundred and eight videos in it). So, there is hope that this channel might be an ASMR resource for us for a lengthy period of time.
MRCP Paces History
Again, this features Dr Punekar and is very similar at the start as the last video. If anything the background noise is higher and the voices of the participants sound more distant than in the previous video.
There are various background noises which sound rather like doors opening and closing (possibly in an adjacent room).
The participants voices are calm and measured, with just the air conditioning for company.
This time the post-mortem phase in which progress of the student is discussed does not appear to have any higher participation by the air conditioning.
MRCP Paces Station 4: Communication and Ethics
This is a bit over nineteen and a quarter minutes and features Dr Punekar again. Again, the introduction is calm and quiet. The air conditioning’s participation is not excessive.
However, this is really quite stressful, not the kind of video that I think we will want in the Procrastination Pen playlist.
There are a lot of videos in the MRCP Paces series and so I use this as a whet your appetite introduction and we can return in the future and hopefully do a few more.
The Blackpool Teaching Hospitals 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.
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