I Heart Guts » Newsy Guts

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!

Sight Seeing

gutsy — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:42:01 +0000

We’re taking a road trip through the human body on our way from DC to Chicago for Renegade Craft Fair in Wicker Park! We filled our itinerary with anatomical sights our guts need to see, such as the American Visonary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, which not only has a giant statue of Divine (of John Waters fame), but they also have a drawing of two anatomy charts kissing by Alex Grey. The giant walk-through heart at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia has been calling our names for years, as have our friends at the Mutter Museum, which is dedicated to medical and anatomical oddities and antiques. There’s a spinal column carved from a tree in Columbus, Ohio that I absolutely must see, and we’ll likely wind up peeping at sliced human bodies at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. If we had time, Minnesota’s Museum of Questionable Medical Devices would definitely be on our list. Need to plan your own awesome road trip on the way to see your guts? Check out Roadside America’s trip planner for the weirdest the U.S. has to offer. And if you’re in Chicago this weekend, come see us at Renagade, booth #92, we will have tons of new stuff for you to see, including giant plushie intestines, giant kidneys, giant pancreases, plush thyroids, plush appendixes, eyeball pins, skin pins, teeth pins, lymph node pins and more! Come give your guts a squeeze in person.

Takin’ a Breather

gutsy — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:06:39 +0000

Our guts are tired and we need a break! The I Heart Guts store will be on vacation August 17-25th, so if you need organs, we highly recommend getting them from us now or grabbing guts from a store close to you (if they don’t have the organ you want, ask them to order it from our distributor!) We will be accepting orders, but we will not ship until August 25th, so unless you are super-duper patient, please order before August 16th, or after August 25th! Thanks for understanding and apologies for the break in gutsy service. We promise to return with happy hearts, refreshed pancreases and overtaxed livers.

Big Things Ahead

gutsy — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 14:45:40 +0000

Maybe your brain wasn’t burning with the question, “What’s new with guts at Comic Con this year?” but we’re gonna share anyway. Some more BIG GUTS will debut at Comic Con, specifically the new Colossal Kidney, Big Brain, Immense Intestine and Prodigious Pancreas, all pictured here. These are so fun and fluffy and fabulous, we cannot wait to share them with our favorite folks at the world’s largest geek convention (being geeks ourselves, we’re allowed to say that). If that’s not enough, we’ll also have our brand new plush appendix and plush thyroid, seen below, so please stop by our booth, #932! We’ll also have our usual array of tees, pins, posters and other fun stuff. And for those of you who can’t make it, don’t worry, these guys are on now for sale on our website! And there’s still a handful of the lifesize kidneys, pancreases and intestines left if you want ‘em.

Sweet as Sugar

gutsy — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:43:24 +0000

Being a kid with type 1 diabetes is a lot tougher than not having cake and ice cream whenever you want. Imagine not being able to spend the night at a friend’s house because an adult needs to monitor your glucose levels so that you won’t have major health complications. Imagine pricking your finger several times a day to check your blood sugar levels. Imagine wearing a pump and a glucose monitor all day every day. What you are imagining is a day in the life of seven-year-old Jillian Rater. The Council Bluffs, Iowa, native recently took a trip with other children from 50 states and 7 countries to rally congress into supporting research and funding to fight type 1 diabetes. About 3 million Americans are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which means the body doesn’t produce insulin, and it affects 3 million Americans and about 215,000 kids, according to the American Diabetes Association. As you may recall, the pancreas makes insulin, which regulates one’s blood sugar. If the ol’ panky’s not working, then insulin must be monitored and injected to keep blood sugar from getting too high or too low. That’s Jillian there with Crystal Bowersox, an American Idol finalist who also has type 1 diabetes, and Representative Steve King of Iowa. We love that Jillian included her favorite pancreas pal, named “Panky,” in her photos. We’re rooting for you, Jillian, and the hundreds of thousands of gutsy kids who are our heroes every day. Let’s hope the gut-wrenching tales from all these cute kids testifying at the Capitol will help sweeten the deal for projects in the works such as the artificial pancreas.

Uterus Inc.

gutsy — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:45:30 +0000

Leave it it the uterus to make a big splash on the floor of the House of Representatives. Republican house leaders reprimanded Florida state representative Scott Randolph, after he suggested his wife “incorporate her uterus” and also asked them to “look into your heart” in order to get business-friendly Republicans to leave women’s lady parts alone. ”Republicans, after all, wouldn’t want to further regulate a Florida business,” reported the St. Petersberg Times on the incident, which occurred in late March. The GOP defended itself, telling him not to discuss “body parts” on the house floor without first letting kids leave (let’s not forget everyone in the chamber had, early on, spent time inside a uterus). Obviously, no one’s gonna make a U-turn on how they feel about the “U-word.” The comment has since inspired songs, a Uterati Facebook page, led the ACLU to create the website incorporatemyuterus.com and Andrew Leonard at Salon.com wants to get a t-shirt made: “Get the government out of my uterus, and into Goldman Sachs.”

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.

Hearts in the Right Place

gutsy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:18:22 +0000

Washington DC’s cherry blossom festival April 9 was epic in many ways, we had an impossibly great time meeting peeps and selling guts in the nation’s capitol! Lucky for me, my husband, Codi, was able to join me at the booth while my mom watched my 3.5-year-old son and my nearly-80-year-old dad took care of the baby — it was truly a family affair. We had a ball, people came out in droves despite mediocre weather and a possible government shutdown. We enjoyed watching people giggle over our “I’m a Liver Not a Fighter” shirts, thymus pins, plushie spleens and other silly goofy stuff. The street festival was also able to raise thousands for Japan tsunami relief, if you have still not donated, we have heard the Japanese Red Cross Society has been on the ground helping people since the earthquake struck, learn more about what the Japanese Red Cross is doing to help. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi at our first east coast show! Next up: Bust Craftacular in NYC May 21st, hope to see you in Manhattan.

Medical Marvels

gutsy — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:01:12 +0000

Fascinating conference alert: Annual American Association for the History of Medicine Meeting starts up tomorrow in Philly, check out the panels and papers here or on Morbid Anatomy. Who wouldn’t want to sit in on sessions such as “Disease in the Middle Ages: Goiter, Lupus, and Anxiety” or hear papers like “Salvage Mission: The Lobotomized Patients of the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Psychiatric Hospital in Montreal” or talks such as “Osler and the Sanitary Movement with a Scatological Guide to Loos, Privies, and Crappers”? Wish we were going! Illustration by Marc Jean Bourgery from the John Martin Rare Book Room at the University of Iowa.