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Archive for the ‘Medical Guts’ Category

Follow These Guts

Posted: Thursday, October 14th, 2010

Gorgeous organ-themed illustrations by Mike McQuade. LOVE his stuff! Not only is it beautiful and quirky, but we love the simple mini-explainers about the inner workings of things like valves and adrenal glands. HIs website is chock full of guts, organs and other stuff inside. {via Street Anatomy}

Destroy Your Liver!

Posted: Thursday, October 7th, 2010

October is National Liver Awareness Month so we wanted to make sure you knew the Five Fastest Ways to Destroy Your Liver:

1. Booze it Up! No fewer than ten alcoholic drinks a day will effectively shut down your liver, so drink up! Some of the most enjoyable side effects of liver scarring — called cirrhosis — include: jaundice, fluid retention and, for the gents, enlarged breasts and shrinking testicles. Simply replace water with vodka and you’ll be steps from total liver failure!

2. Have unprotected sex! When you wanna feel the love, be sure to leap into bed without a condom with someone who’s already got the Hepatitis virus — sex is the easiest way to contract it! Either A,B or C will do, but B and C are the most damaging, so try to catch one of those. Hepatitis is a form of liver inflammation that can cause fatigue, abdominal pain and nausea. The good news? Even if you develop a few pesky Hepatitis symptoms now, you can still develop actual liver failure later.

3. Overmedicate! Even overdoing it with Tylenol can cause acute liver damage. The liver’s processing power is mighty, but in large amounts acetaminophen can directly damage liver cells. Pop no fewer than 4 grams of extra-strength Tylenol to shut down your liver in just two weeks!

4. Shoot Up Drugs! Not be outdone by Tylenol, shooting drugs like heroin or methamphetamine straight into your veins is a faster and more efficient way to destroy your pesky liver. Not only do the drugs themselves harm and overtax the liver, but sharing needles could lead to Hepatitis B and C. Two for one special!

5. Eat like crap! Put yourself in the grave early by downing plenty of fatty sugary foods like donuts and deep fried Twinkies. If you eat a Krispy Kreme bacon-chocolate cheeseburger in a restaurant where the staff refuses to wash its hands, you could get your fat and some Hep A on the side (the virus lives inside an infected person’s poop, so it’s most easily contracted when someone doesn’t wash hands after using the bathroom).

As you can see, you have to put in a little extra effort to destroy you liver. But if you work hard at the drugs and drinking, you can do it! You won’t live long without your liver, so once your liver is on the fritz, you can join the tens of thousands of people waiting for years for a liver transplant. Be sure to avoid regular exercise, don’t eat vegetables, don’t drink plenty of water, and most of all, stay away from your doctor!

Heart Strings

Posted: Friday, September 17th, 2010

I know, I know, again with the Cleveland Clinic, but these gorgeous simple organ line drawings from a recent ad campaign were what I was looking for when I came upon their designer hospital gowns.

Haute Hospital

Posted: Friday, September 17th, 2010

If you’ve ever suffered the indignity of wearing an ugly and revealing hospital gown, designer Diane von Furstenberg has got your back. The woman behind the iconic printed wrap-around dress connected with the Cleveland Clinic to improve the look of hospital gowns for its patients. Tres chic, but apparently hospital guests are as picky as your average fashionista — men think the colors are too feminine, the fabric shrank a bit on the wash and some say the snaps don’t close well (problems are being corrected). The designer wrote on Twitter: “We are very proud of our hospital gowns for the Cleveland Clinic. We worked hard at it and we hope it will make patients happier! DVF”

Beautiful Brains

Posted: Thursday, September 16th, 2010

Some past winners from the Association of Medical Illustrators Salon winners. From left to right, Mark Schornak’s illustration of Transcallosal Interforniceal Approach to Hypothalamic Hamartoma (say that five times fast); Brendan Taylor’s Olfactory Tract and Limbic System; and Andy Rekito’s Stroke: The Three Critical Hours. Browse more work here.

Preschool Pre-Meds

Posted: Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Short doctors are no solution to the doctor shortage. Snapped this pic outside Irvine’s Pretend City, aka toddler heaven. Operators are standing by…

Two Better Than One?

Posted: Monday, August 30th, 2010

Why do we have two kidneys, but just one heart? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have extras of everything in case something goes wrong? Why can’t we be like the lowly earthworm, with five different hearts? Or those girls with two bladders and two uteruses? Or that other girl with four kidneys? Some extras make sense — for example, having two eyeballs gives us better, binocular, vision. The heart and brain have two parts each, of course, but each side has a different function. One chamber of the heart pumps out oxygenated blood, the other pumps in deoxygenated blood; and each lobe of the brain is responsible for different functions and operations. The liver regenerates, so need for two of those, and you can live without the spleen and gallbladder. But as for the double kidneys, we’re not sure why one wouldn’t suffice to clean the bloodstream, and why do we need two lungs? Rutgers University anthropologist Susan Cachel told Discovery Health the one heart/two lung system started about 300 million years ago, when we emerged from the muck onto land. For whatever reason, that’s what we needed to survive on land, and it’s remained the same ever since. Not a very satisfying answer, if you ask me, but there you go.

Urine My Heart

Posted: Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

Will you take this kidney to be your lawfully wedded wife? I do! Rick White and Kelley Agard, both of Iowa, were married on Monday and Kelley’s donating her kidney to Rick — who has polycystic kidney disease — today. What a fabulous bride!

Pimp My Prostate

Posted: Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

I imagine that going in for a prostate exam ranks low on any man’s to-do list, but how about when it’s combined with a vintage car show? Sound better? A number of classic car shows across the country and now including free prostate screenings along with the chrome bumpers and candy-colored automobiles. Last weekend’s 6th Annual Classic Aircraft and Car Show/Prostate Cancer Awareness Day was hosted by the Urology Center of Colorado, and the 11th annual Cruisin’ for a Cure Car Show is going on at the Orange County Fair & Event Center this weekend. There’s more in Texas, Utah and one on New York’s Long Island. So if you love someone who loves cars and needs to pay better attention to his prostate, check out one of these events near you!

Jelly Brains

Posted: Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Just when you thought you couldn’t take another earnest medical drama, along comes Adult Swim’s new series “Children’s Hospital,” a fabulously demented and sick (in a good way) parody of the doctor drama genre. Don’t let the blood-stained scrubs on that clown and Henry Winkler cameo fool you — it’s not kid-friendly.

 
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