I Heart Guts » Medical Guts

Nerd Power!

gutsy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:04:31 +0000

My geeky heart swells with pride — an interview in Games Magazine! I know most people will flip right past it since it’s not a puzzle or a game review, but I’m still honored to be included in a mag read by such smart people. If only my brain was smart enough to do the puzzles…

Body Breakdown

gutsy — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:50:31 +0000

Here’s a quick cheat sheet to remember what all those guts and glands are doing all day inside your body, as told by our lapel pins. Your marvelous reproductive friends (with benefits?) are busy squirting away, and technically the sex organs and glands also require help from the brain, hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenals and yes, even sweat and saliva to some extent (but I digress!) Onward to Team Digestion, those little guys that make eating such a pleasure! Thanks everyone! What would we do without the admirable and ceaseless devotion of our circulatory system? The heart pumps blood, hormones, air anywhere it’s needed, while the respiratory champs the lungs get air in and out with no breaks whatsoever. What a champ! Onward to the good ol’ brain, in charge of the entire nervous system, the boss of the entire body. Who’s there to take out the trash? Why, the excretory system, of course, with major players the kidneys, intestine and bladder taking the junk out of your trunk. The skin keeps all the organs bundled neatly inside, and sebaceous glands keep our skin soft while sweat glands keep us cool. Flu? Colds? Not with this tough team around — your immune system is staffed by the wonderful lymphatic nodes, spleen and thymus gland, which keep you in good health (unless they don’t, some bugs are craftier than others, I suppose). Finishing up, we have the glands that make us hormonal, the Endocrine Party comprising adrenals, pancreas, parathyroid and thyroid! And there, in a nutshell, is the human body.

Guts Popping Up!

gutsy — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:40:08 +0000

Whether you love Valentine’s Day or loathe it, we still want you to visit our gutsy pop-up shops! We’ve got three special spots where you can score Guts in person — our pals at Munky King in Los Angeles, Trohv D.C. and Trohv Baltimore will be carrying the full I Heart Guts lineup for two weeks Feb. 1-14. Best of all? Your guts can actually do some good — 10% of sales will go toward a local clinic, Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, George Washington University’s HEALing Clinic in D.C., and Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute in Baltimore. Perhaps you want to say urine love with a kidney, or give your heart, or show someone how much you heart their guts, or maybe you’re just tired of teddy bears, chocolate and roses, but for whatever reason, stop by and pay your guts a visit!

Heart Murmur

gutsy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:22:59 +0000

It took blood, sweat, and, yes, a few tears, to put together a real honest-to-goodness paper I Heart Guts wholesale catalog and here it is, ready to go to the New York International Gift Fair in January, our first show of the year. We’re actually at booth #30002 in “New York’s Newest” at Pier 92, which is sort of a holding-zone for new people at the show. Anyway, I’m excited to finally have a real catalog, so if your store needs one, contact us and we’ll mail you one! It’s even sorta semi-educational, you can learn a little bit about the thymus and other wonderful glands on the lapel pin page!

New on the Team

gutsy — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:10:49 +0000

I Heart Guts is excited to welcome Rachel, a fabulous Jane-of-all-trades who helps at Guts headquarters with shipping, inventory management, social media and a bunch of other stuff. A senior art student University of Maryland, she enjoys crafty sewing projects, swimming and yoga, plus she makes a mean chocolate-peanut-butter chip cookie (just ask her four roommates). Rachel’s favorite glands are the adrenals, since they are in charge of excitement, thrills and chills. “They just look funny,” Rachel says. She recently got her pre-med boyfriend to score some rat kidneys from his anatomy lab for her to look at for a giant kidney bean bag chair she made for art class. Amazing! Welcome, Rachel!

Warms the Cockles

gutsy — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:46:58 +0000

The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices lost its leader last year when founder Bob McCoy passed away in May of last year. Before donating his collection to the Science Museum of Minnesota in 2002, McCoy had the good sense to create an online archive of “the world’s most inane and useless information about how to cure…what may ail you,” which includes the Prostate Gland Warmer (pictured), Foot-operated breast enlarger pump, and phlebotomy (bloodletting) and phrenology (the study of head bumps to determine personality).

Brain Flavor

gutsy — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:21:54 +0000

Ever trust your gut more than your brain? Turns out following your gut feelings might still actually be following what your brain tells you, albeit a different part of your brain. Dr. Virginia Utermohlen, who runs the Taste Science Laboratory at Cornell, studies the way flavor and smell receptors in the tongue interact with the brain, and even how they influence our food choices, decisions and even our personalities. Logical reasoning is handled by the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex, while our gut instincts are formed by the orbito-frontal cortex, all inside the brain. Interestingly, the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex gets no input from the body on matters of smell and taste, while the orbito-frontal cortex does. {via my new favorite book, Cooking For Geeks}

Will Kidney for iPad

gutsy — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:36:25 +0000

What would it take to get you to give up one of your kidneys? A small car? A trip to Fiji? The health of someone you love? For one young man in China, all he needed in exchange for his kidney was an iPad 2. That, and $3,400 bucks. Folks are having a field day on Twitter, here are some of my favorite tweets: “He should’ve waited for the iPad 3″ by @therealnickmack and “I’ve had a productive week, Got a new Kidney and managed to get rid of a faulty iPad” by @sickipediabot.

Heart of Brick

gutsy — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 00:30:15 +0000

I’m a sucker for Lego skeletons, but Lego skeletons with guts? Even more so. By Clay Morrow. Thanks, Scott!

Guts in Brooklyn

gutsy — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 19:34:05 +0000

We’re cramming our suitcases full of spleens and heading off to Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn June 11+12. The photo is from our booth at the recent Bust Craftacular in New York — that’s the marvelous and wonderful Callie Janoff, the very esteemed reverend of the Church of Craft, New York chapter, who was kind enough to help with the Bust booth (thank you, Callie!). We hope the weather will be pleasant so we can enjoy the summertime in McCarren Park. Won’t you join us? Check out the list of fabulous vendors and come pay us a visit if you’re around!