I Heart Guts

Take Our Testicle Poll!

gutsy — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:53:13 +0000

I’m working on a testicle exam chart to encourage men to grope their balls during Testicular Cancer Awareness Week, coming up in April. Anyway, give us feedback on our chart! We kind of figure most men touch their testicles at least once a day — the need to adjust, don’t ya know — but that may not necessarily mean they are actively looking for telltale lumps. So, we’d like to take a very unscientific survey — men: how often do you touch your balls daily? The results will be included in our final poster as one of a handful of Nutty Nuggets — fun facts about testicles!

Bladder Buddy

gutsy — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:15:54 +0000

I’ll admit, potty training my little boy has been something I’ve been putting off. But last night I finally gave into the bribery method, offering one Tic Tac for every pee and two for every poo. So far, this has made him waaaay more enthusiastic about visiting the toilet. I had been trying for a more purist approach, using stickers and clapping as incentives, but that wasn’t nearly as exciting as sugar. Between the candy, the Cars-themed underwear (I’d rather have Pee & Poo undies, of course) and Potty Elmo I feel like a total sellout, but the idea of not spending more dollars on diapers fills me with hope and glee. Here’s some more good potty training tips. Wish me luck, and if you have any more potty training tips, post them here!

The Gland Family

gutsy — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:18:43 +0000

Digging through some old files, I came upon one of my favorite rags from the 90s zine scene, Ain’t Nothin’ Like F-n Moonshine, a magazine put together in San Francisco back in the mid-90s. Probably my favorite thing ever published in Moonshine was this awesome mini-comic — Glandpa — drawn by genius comic artist David Fremont of Glue and Spider Eggs. Now that I’ve Googled him, I know that he’s still drawing freaky little friends, yay! We’re assuming Skizzle is going for Glandpa’s squirting thyroid here, but you can’t be too sure…

The Popular Pineal

gutsy — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:11:26 +0000

The pineal gland may be small, but it looms large in the minds of literary types. Did you know the pineal gland was a source of fascination to philosophers like Descartes, who called it the “seat of the soul“? The pineal gland captured the imagination of authors like Hunter S. Thompson, whose character Dr. Gonzo feared the psychoactive properties of pineal gland extract in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “Man, I’ll try just about anything, but I’d never in hell touch a pineal gland,” Dr. Gonzo said in the movie version of the book. In his novel Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace’s fictional corporation Stonecipheco worked on putting a pineal additive in baby food. More pop culture pineal stuff here.

Planting Eggs

gutsy — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:18:28 +0000

I didn’t even know that ovarian transplants were possible, but indeed they are. Not only that, but one cancer survivor who underwent an ovarian transplant later gave birth to a child naturally, even though her chemo treatment put her in early menopause earlier. After the Danish woman was diagnosed with Ewings sarcoma, they preserved part of her ovary before undergoing radiation therapy. The case was reported in the journal Human Reproduction. {via WebMD}

Drama in the ER

gutsy — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:04:37 +0000

Well, whaddya know it’s another medical show! We didn’t think there could possibly be room for another hospital procedural, but apparently the public is still hungering for more. Either that, or television execs are desperate for ratings. Anyway. The new CBS show Miami Medical follows the adrenaline-fueled lives of a team of docs working in a South Florida trauma hospital unit. Debuts in April.

Surgery Lesson

gutsy — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:57:59 +0000

“What a surgeon does to a patient — if it were done without consent — would be a felony.” surgeon and inventor Dr. Catherine Mohr tells TED in a fascinating podcast about the past, present and future of surgery. Learn about the brutalities of old-school surgery, performed without anesthesia and often without even clean hands, and familiarize yourself with surgery’s robotic future. This skull dates back 5,000-10,000 years, waaay before aseptic surgical techniques and certainly way before anesthetics. The crazy thing? Anthropologists have determined that from the healing seen on this trephinated skull that the “patient” actually survived this brutal and crude brain surgery. The surgical future includes amazing things like repairing the heart without cracking the ribcage.

Kidneys Are Back!

gutsy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:22:18 +0000

Boring news alert: We were out of a few sizes in our When Urine Love kidney shirt for a while, but we’re happy to let you renal fans out there that kidney shirts are back in stock in all sizes! Just the thing if you’re getting a kidney, giving a kidney, need a boost during dialysis, etc.

Taking Out the Bowels

gutsy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:13:03 +0000

We heart this fabulous new Samurai-themed birthday card by the bright minds over at Fomato, which explains all the many different reasons these Japanese warriors ritually disembowel themselves in ritual suicide. Study this guide carefully to make sure you don’t have to take out your intestines to say, preserve your mother’s honor or whatnot.

Mind the Guts

gutsy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:01:46 +0000

Take the green line to the stomach, transfer at the spleen, then take one stop to your pancreas… This bodily subway map by illustrator Samantha Loman reminds us of the body’s complicated connections in a clean and handy format in the style of the London Underground. {Street Anatomy via Cool Hunting. Thanks, Julie!}