I Heart Guts » People With 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.

Merry 2012!

gutsy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:52:41 +0000

The highlight of our trip to Florida was going to the mall — but not just any mall. We went on a pilgrimage of sorts, to visit the Friends With You Rainbow Valley playground at the Aventura Mall in Miami. It was as magical as we imagined and stomach and heart had a great time bouncing around on the sparkly cuteness (as did our two kids). It was a great start to what we hope will be a happy and healthy fresh new year for everyone!

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.

Child at Heart

gutsy — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:32:14 +0000

Wanna learn how to make your own organ-emblazoned tee? Look no further than Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational, a blog by a clever homeschooling mom. She’s got a stencil to make this great shirt, plus more ideas about how to get your kids into their guts. Fabulous!

Metabolic Mate

gutsy — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:34:46 +0000

The latest in our bizarre stuffed body parts was actually inspired by a pretty heart-wrenching experience — cancer. Making a plush thyroid was something I’d been toying with for a while, after getting several requests from you, our wonderful customers, but it became personal when my husband — and I Heart Guts’ co-founder — was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last year. As far as cancers go, thyroid cancer is really not so bad, especially when compared with say, pancreatic cancer or brain cancer. But, let’s be real, hearing the word “cancer” attached to someone you love is horrible. While my husband got his thyroid removed and underwent radioactive iodine treatment, I found solace in planning a friendly and fuzzy version of this butterfly-shaped endocrine gland, which hugs the trachea and controls our metabolism. We gave thyroid and parathyroid pins to the amazing staff at UCLA Endocrine Surgery, and the fantastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Yeh, was super-excited to see such a strange and specialized product. “The parathyroid gets no love,” Dr. Yeh lamented. I also tried to make my husband laugh by doodling a silly disco-dancing thyroid and a jogging thyroid, and both of these drawings are included in the new hangtag, see details below (thanks to your input, my dear readers, we chose the Travolta Thyroid for the cover, yay!). So stay tuned, your plush thyroid will be available for cuddling very very soon! We hope you like it.

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.

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}

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.

Wonder in Our Hearts

gutsy — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:55:31 +0000

Despite a handful of Charlie Brown moments, we had a delightful time at Wondercon in San Francisco, thanks to a little help from my friends. Special thanks to Aimee, Russ, Nancy, Katie, Tiffany and Robyn for jumping in to help me with booth and baby at the show. We got to meet tons of great people, including organ-loving chef Chris Cosentino of Incanto/Boccalone fame, he presented us with I <3 Offal stickers and told us all about the organ meat you can’t eat (apparently you cannot legally consume lungs and mammary glands because they cannot be properly inspected by the FDA). Author Michael Chabon stopped by the guts booth with his family, zombie expert and “World War Z” author Max Brooks gave our guts a shout-out from his panel, and Princess Leia liked our lungs. As usual, we heard inspiring tales from people — one woman who bought a plush ovary was going to get her tubes un-tied following the passing of one of her children (we wish you all the luck in the world, nice lady!). Another lady bought a Liver Not a Fighter shirt for her four year old son who’d had a liver transplant when he was just two years old (and he’s still going strong!). Wrenching and incredible. We have to apologize once more to Judith and Ashley, to whom we promised Wondercon passes after they won our Facebook contest encouraging people to share weird body part stories. We usually get 10 passes, but they cut that number down to 4 this year, so those passes evaporated on the spot and we still feel horrible about it! So sorry ladies, will you ever forgive us?

Our Daily Meds

gutsy — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 02:18:08 +0000

Check out the daily doses of meds by a bunch of different post-op transplant recipients, who must take pills by the bucketload to keep their bodies from rejecting the donor organs. This here is Jaden with the medications he must take daily for the rest of this life (he had a liver transplant six months ago). Other absolutely fascinating photos posted on The Waiting List’s Facebook page.