Tag: Zzzs

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

SUBSCRIBE FOR DAILY VIDEOS https://bit.ly/Subscribe2MadP

my personal insta:  / just_madspam 

asmr insta:   / madpasmr 

For collaborations: madpasmr@gmail.com

Wear Headphones

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

Sleeping With ASMR

I have been considering a move towards reviewing some meditation material on YouTube as I know that I have been reviewing inadvertent ASMR material for a very long time now and possibly a change may not go awry.

However, that will be for a future date. Today we are back to an old favourite voice which we have covered in a previous post:

Abraham Verghese: “Cutting for Stone”

A bit of a diversion but only because we encountered Abraham Verghese in our review of the Stanford material.

There are notes of course: ”22,835 views 13 Jul 2011

“Patients require that one-on-one encounter, the Samaritan function of being a physician,” says writer and Stanford Medical School professor Abraham Verghese. “I’m convinced that when the physician examines the patient, this is an incredibly important ritual.” Watch more of Fred de Sam Lazaro’s conversation with writer and Stanford Medical School professor Abraham Verghese, author of “Cutting for Stone.”

Watch our full profile of Abraham Verghese:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandet…”

the URL for the profile by the way leads here: Abraham Verghese.

The video is a bit over twenty-seven minutes (so longer than we have been covering of late).

It starts without music and this makes such a positive difference in contrast with some we have reviewed where the music is the major distraction that eventually consigns the video to the archive list.

Abraham Verghese (when not undercut with peppy music anyway) has an awesome voice, mellow, measured, dignified in fact. I intended to listen whilst typing but instead found myself focused on the video, this points up the quality of the sound we are dealing with here and contrasts strongly with some of the more borderline items we have listened to of late.

The channel does not strike me as very much medical and not very much ASMR either, it is Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. This channel has six hundred and ninety-one videos at the time I am looking at it. That is quite a few to search through in the hope of finding medical/ASMR videos. There are fourteen playlists and as luck would have it one of them is entitled “Health and Medicine” which seems squarely in the sights of material that we have recently been covering:

Health and Medicine consists of the following videos:

Affordable Heart Surgery in India

This has age verification against it and so it is just not going into the Procrastination Pen playlist.

It is just less than nine minutes, and as a professional video has notes associated with it:

“1,297,372 views 10 Sept 2015

Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, a heart surgeon in India, runs a network of for-profit hospitals that perform world-class operations at a small fraction of what they would cost in the U.S. He is driven by his belief that even the most sophisticated surgery should be available to the world’s poorest people, and he says that “if a solution is not affordable, it is not a solution. It’s pointless if we talk about huge developments in cardiac surgery or a brain operation or complex cancer surgery if [the] common man cannot afford it.”

Watch this story on our website:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandet…

—

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

http://www.pbs.org/religion”

Comments are permitted and for a change these seem to be universally supportive. No obvious comments from ASMR fans though and that is a bad sign, given an ASMR afficionado makes a ferret look uninquisitive.

The video starts without music but has the style of an interview for a news programme. Not a style that lends itself to a blog on ASMR. It is not immediately obvious why age verification was necessary – perhaps operations are viewed as off-putting content. Sadly, it discounts it from inclusion in the playlist so I include it simply out of interest.

Kidney Donors and Faith Communities

This one did not challenge me to login to verify my age so that’s a more reassuring start. There are notes but they are pretty samey with the previous notes we have seen, so I won’t delay you with more of them.

It is a little less than eight and a half minutes and so again not a huge length for a video. There is a fairly substantial level of background noise but again the presentation as a news story is not great in terms of ASMR. It’s a shame, because some of the participants have a great voice. But these are interspersed by voices that are less suitable.

The Dalai Lama’s Doctor

Less than seven minutes and so far, I am quite impressed with the somewhat diverse nature of the videos in this one playlist. I am less impressed that they all seem to be in the format of news. This one is in the same format. It’s sad because the presenter’s voice is great. However, it is interspersed with traffic noise, wind noise and of course other voices. As such it does not have a place in the Procrastination Pen playlist, however if you are seeking videos with calm voices I recommend that you review this one.

Death with Dignity

A fascinating subject certainly, and this time a video which is a little less than eight and a half minutes.

Again, this is in the format of a news programme. This time the included voices are excellent and, had it been a medical video, this would have seen it included in the Procrastination Pen playlist.

Like the previous video, I would recommend a review of this as the voices included are calm ones and it won’t feature anywhere on theprocrastinationpen YouTube channel.

Here, there will be no new playlist and I do not think that the Abraham Verghese video belongs in the Stanford Medicine playlist. Therefore, I think it will simply feature in the overall playlist.

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

I had been stockpiling blog articles and had built up quite a number, to the extent that for several months I simply stopped writing. There was every danger that videos would be taken down from YouTube before the article ever saw the light of day and hence any evaluation of the videos would have been a waste of time.

I am happy to report that the backlog is now so tiny that I am danger of running out of material for the blog altogether. I am sure that regular readers would be delighted deeply concerned in case that happened.

Perhaps this is now a good time to start bringing some changes, in order to inject a little more life into the blog, but without the drama of a revolution. To this end I thought I would review at least one video on a medical theme that comes from a professional ASMR artist. If this proves to be a popular change, perhaps I will make it permanent.

Moonlight Cottage ASMR has 1.39M subscribers at the time I am looking at the channel. Some details of Moonlight Cottage have been recorded online., So obviously Moonlight Cottage is a professional ASMR artist (and a very successful one). The channel has one hundred and twenty nine videos and so there is space there for many videos which are not on a medical theme. So far so good.

However, I have self-elected to stick to a medical theme for the moment, so I have selected the following video:

The Shelter | ASMR Sci-Fi Roleplay (medical & skin exam, soft spoken)

It is a little over half an hour and so substantial enough in length and, given it is a professional ASMR video, we are setting the standard very high in terms of review.

It starts with an ocean which is that great standby of relaxing tracks but sadly also with music… It isn’t particularly oppressive music, but I was expecting something spoken or even whispered. It is beautifully constructed in the manner of a professional film, good costumes, effects, scenery but that isn’t why we are here. What does it sound like?

There are a number of distractions in terms of triggering sounds that work for some ASMR fans but sadly not for me: rustling noises, scraping noises, beeping noises. If one of these is your trigger then fill your boots.

As expected, the person participating has an excellent voice and is exactly the correct tone. I am guessing if this was not the case then 1.39M subscribers would be subscribing elsewhere.

However (and no doubt due to the science fiction theme) there are a number of less welcome noises as well. Clicks, beeps and whirring noises crop up sufficiently often to be distracting. There is also a constant background hum as if the video was shot in an area with air conditioning, but I suspect was added to improve the perception of the video being shot inside of a spaceship or similar. Usually I hope to get videos entirely without such background noises but I can see why it was done in this case. There are clunks from equipment, and further sounds from it being dragged – the sort of noises I have avoided in inadvertent ASMR videos.

The tail end of the video contains no speech at all, but more of the beeps, sliding noises, background air conditioning noises i.e. the parts that were less impressive about the rest of the video.

All that said, the bar was set very high, precisely because this is a professional ASMR video and I do think you could do worse than listen to the video for yourself. I’ll add it to the Sweetie Jar list which currently is the only one I have for such professional videos.

That may change if this aspect of the blog proves to be more popular.

So, now we have dispensed with the additional extra video, what about the meat and potatoes of this blog i.e. an inadvertent ASMR video.

Today’s video comes from a site which regular readers will well recognise:

University of Leicester

So it must have something going for it.

The video is this one:

Cardiovascular Examination – Demonstration

It is only five- and three-quarter minutes long and has a little of the straight-to-video quality about it. The patient is Mr Jackson. The notes tell us something about the participants “Presented by Dr Adrian Stanley PhD FRCP Consultant in Cardiovascular Medicine. Produced and Directed by Dr Irene Peat FRCR FRCP, Dr Nicholas Port MBChB BSc and Jon Shears.”

Fortunately for us Dr Stanley has a great voice. The video is not hampered by startup music but it is by the constant background noise, presumably from air conditioning. The pace is good rather than excellent. But it is quite relaxing, I think. 

This forms part of the Clinical Examinations playlist which is ten videos long – perhaps a little long for us today.

However, the University of Leicester does have another Cardiovascular based video worth examining, which is this one:

Cardiovascular Examination – Explanation

This one is nearly thirteen minutes long and shares many of the attributes of the last one, only more so, obviously. There are a few more noises as Mr Jackson gets to undress at the beginning, but Dr Stanley still has a great voice and in this longer video the pace seems much more measured (that might purely be personal perception). There are heart sounds included in this one but these are not excessively loud or off-putting.

The University of Leicester Playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Picture DeepAI.org

Sleeping With ASMR

Recently 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.

Picture DeepAI.org