This week I have a bit of a cautionary tale which indicates that not all supplements are harmless and perhaps careful perusal of the label is required.
I’ve been reading about magnesium and discovered an article indicating that some people are low in magnesium and taking an extra supplement might work well for them in terms of resolving any sleep difficulties.
I decided to start doubling the dose. I was taking one pill per day so I resolved to take two. This worked fantastically well for about five days. I got to sleep quickly; I remained asleep all night, in fact I had trouble getting up on time in the morning. I believed I had cracked the problem, magnesium was the wonder drug and I was going to write an update for this blog about it.
On the fifth day I dragged myself out of bed and my head was swimming like a post-alcohol daze. I have had vertigo before (due to an inner ear infection). It felt exactly like that. About mid-way through the morning, I began to feel thoroughly sick. I had to go and stand in the cold air to stop myself from throwing up.
It took a while to work out what had changed. However, when I asked my favourite AI what an overdose of magnesium would do, dizziness and nausea were two of the key ones. In addition, it was a miracle that I was not suffering with diarrhoea at the same time. I checked the pills and they definitely said one only per day. For five days I had been taking double the recommended dose.
Since then, I have been off the magnesium and it shows; my sleep is broken, short and problematic just as it was before. On the upside I am not waking up feeling nauseous. Magnesium may help but an excess of it does not help more, or at least in my experience not for very long.
Hopefully this will stop someone else needing to learn the lesson the hard way as I did.
Each week I have been listening to Calm because I have a subscription to Calm and it would be rude not to. I post recommendations here on the understanding that one person in a great many may find them of use.
https://www.calm.com/app/player/nkWhJIdOC_
Daily Jay
Critical Thinking
NARRATOR
Jay Shetty
Do you need to rethink something, do you have to go more deeply and reframe? Do you have to think about your attitude about something and consider alternative points of view?
I often come back to Jay Shetty; he has a lot of fascinating material. But if you are in search of the best voice on Calm, I would think that maybe Tamara Levitt (assuming you have a subscription, of course)
Today’s professional ASMR is something of a bright contrast compared to the material that I am used to dealing with. The gender, the age range, the voice of this ASMR professional is somewhat different to the kind of material I have happened across of late. Let’s hope it is a positive change.
The Channel is Feel Better Now. It has 26.5k subscribers eighty-seven videos, six playlists of which this one would be on theme for the blog to date:
The video is this one:
Grandpa Gives You a Mental Health Assessment #asmr #mentalhealth #roleplayasmr
Of course it has notes; it’s from a professional ASMR artist: “236,258 views 27 Mar 2026 ✪ Members first on 27 March 2026 ASMR #asmr #relaxingasmr #lofiasmr
Grandpa Bob uses his clinical skill to relax you and reduce your anxiety, all while taking your blood pressure and checking for signs of head trauma. Paper scratching, Velcro, whispered and softly spoken words. Flashing lights, pouring water.
Please subscribe, stay up to date
/ @feelbetternow
Coffee anyone? ☕Chip in for a cup of coffee and get a personal video from me saying thanks
https://buymeacoffee.com/bobnixon48d
Be an early member of our special group, Feel Better Now! 😃😃 Sneak peeks at new videos and more
Member link: / @feelbetternow-o4t “
However, these notes are refreshingly brief compared to some we have seen.
There are a lot of comments; some are strange, some are positive, some wander off into subjects of interest only to the poster. So, normal YouTube comments then.
The video is a little under twenty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes and starts without music.
The voice of course is an elderly one but I would still say it is whispery (and not just as a result of a few decades alive). Whispery is fine, but I do prefer non-whispery videos if I can find them (they are comparatively rare). This video has a fair amount of silence in it which makes the pace actually quite lovely.
There are some non-vocal sounds, the odd click, some mouth clucking noises (ASMR artists love these). There’s the odd clunk, scribbling on paper noises, some whirring noises (from a blood pressure machine), Velcro noises from the cuff of that machine (those are a tad loud). Hissing from a fizzy water being opened and subsequently poured, fingers tapping, hands clapping together, nails clicking, paper flicking,
At intervals I did feel that I could be doing something else, which is not a great sign. That said, if you’re lying there awaiting sleep, this might be just the sort of thing. I would certainly say it was worthy of review.
Grandpa does not seem to appear in the Internet Archive (well, that I could find) and so it is on to try and find a more general ASMR video which is available outside of YouTube.
This week I happened across this one:
Bluewhisper 2020 06 08 ASMR ♥ Wellness Checkup Doctor Roleplay Gum Chewing Mxhb YtesWQ 396 MB [55ED29D7]
There are notes of course: “by Bluewhisper
Publication date 2020-06-08
Topics ASMR, female, roleplay
Language English
Item Size 647.1M
channel_url – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7wT_mqUvCHEIWm1cuw_T1Q
video_url – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxhb_YtesWQ
A gum chewing physical exam for you 🙂 Thanks for watching.
✨✨✨
Instagram ~ https://www.instagram.com/bluewispy/
Twitter ~ https://twitter.com/bluewispy
Goodreads ~ https://www.goodreads.com/bluewispy
Patreon ~ https://www.patreon.com/bluewhisper
Song
Night Walk – Gavin Luke
#asmr
Equipment Information 🎇
Audio recorded with Tascam DR-40X (affiliate link) – https://amzn.to/377cQ7S
Video recorded with Canon 6D Mark II with 24-105mm IS STM Lens (affiliate link) – https://amzn.to/3h5mQmI
Addeddate 2020-06-09 17:18:05
Collection_added social-media-video additional_collections_video
Identifier bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq
Scanner Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.6.4 “
This is just shy of forty-two minutes and starts with music which fortunately isn’t too energetic. The video is very quiet indeed, one of those you will probably have to elevate the volume to hear well. The quality is a bit on the hazy side (I assume it was recorded from a source online perhaps YouTube).
The voice is excellent with a spot on intonation. It does spend quite a while on the whispery side of whispery, however. There is the occasional mouth clucking sound which, as we know, are a favourite go to of the professional ASMR artist. Perhaps due to limitations of the recording there is a persistent background hiss but this is not excessively loud. However, I did not really get the point of the gum chewing – possibly it is of great appeal to someone, just not to me. The pace is lovely and slow; it is possible to feel internal systems slowing to keep pace with it.
There are clothing rustling noises, the scratching of pen on paper, the moving of equipment, the occasional tap, some glove noises (I’m not a great fan of these), there are Velcro noises, clicking noises, a blood pressure bulb sound (that is not too restful), an escaping air sound (which reminded me of a slow puncture), plastic crinkling noises, and, of course the occasional chewing noise.
Fortunately, it does not end with music. In all I would say rather a good video, and well worth a review and without the need for loud or energetic adverts.
Onto the bread and butter of this series of blog articles, the inadvertent ASMR video from YouTube. This has been the sort of video that I have consistently reviewed since this series of articles began, rather a long time ago now.
We return to a channel that has had quite a lot of attention from this blog, mainly because of the quality of the video content. However, there has been, and no doubt will be, quite a lot of music associated with such videos which is the main downside of them.
The channel is Stanford Medicine 25. This has 345k subscribers, one-hundred-and-thirty-two videos, seventeen playlists which, unsurprisingly, are all on theme for this blog (they’re all medical, it’s a medical channel).
Today’s video is:
Stanford Medicine 25 Lymph Node Exam (Part 1)
It is just under eleven minutes long, and so not very long at all, in fact. It has notes (professional YouTube videos often have notes). “281,041 views 6 Jan 2016
A video recorded many years ago showing Stanford pioneer and hematologist, Saul Rosenberg demonstrating the lymph node exam. “
So, very succinct notes indeed.
UK English persons may note the spelling of haematologist. Apologies, that is definitely what it says and I assume is the accurate United States spelling.
Comments are permitted. There is not a huge number and those that have commented are not universally complementary, which might be a bad sign for us.
As a pleasant surprise there is no introductory music with this at all. The presenter, though, is a little loud and this is one where the volume is going to need to be turned down, I think. The presenter is not introduced either by himself or as a line of text in the video. Fortunately, there are the notes with the video and a comment which states: ” Saul Rosenberg, MD, Maureen Lyles D’Ambrogio Professor Emeritus, who pioneered highly successful treatments for Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes, died Sept. 5 2022 at 95.”.
Despite the volume I think the voice is a good one. There is definitely no whispery presentation here.
The camera sweeps about in a most disconcerting manner. The best advice is not to watch but just to listen to it. The pacing is reasonable, not too rapid which is a mistake made by many video presenters. There is a monologue presentation to start with and for the first four-and-a-half minutes which seems to drag a little (some commentators have noted the “real” start which seems to indicate they are prompting people to jump forwards past this section).
The presentation quietens a tad during the examination proper. This is in keeping with the majority of such videos that I have reviewed thus far. It is still not what you would call truly quiet. The voice, though, remains calm and well-paced.
The camera still seems, at intervals, to have a life of its own, sweeping about when there appears little need for it to do so.
So, it is a reasonable one but also a rather brief one this week.
On that basis, just one, video this time.
That’s it on this occasion, more next time.
See you again next week.
The Stanford Medicine playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here::
The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:
The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:
I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.
The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:
I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.
I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.
If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.
Until next time.
Photo by Deep.ai
The Procrastination Pen 