Appendixes should never get this big, but we wanted to make one big enough to cuddle. Here’s a sneak peek at the prototype for our new plush appendix, brought to you by popular demand! I guess many of you know people with appendicitis or folks who have had appendectomies. Also, oddly enough, we have had frequent requests for a plushie thyroid, so that little fellow is in the works as well, see below. We should release these sometime in Fall 2011 so stay tuned for these oh-so-soft body parts!
I don’t know if you’ve ever read the blog Dear Thyroid, but if you haven’t, you’re in for a treat. Example: “I happen to love Halloween. Because I have Graves’ Ophthalmopathy and I’m a sphere on mini-stilts (5’4), I am a walking costume. I can go to parties, if I choose to, as a pissed off Graves’ disease patient.” Hilarious. Anyway, it got us thinking about Graves — a condition related to an overactive thyroid that causes the eyes to bulge from the sockets, used for comedic advantage by the likes of Marty Feldman and Rodney Dangerfield. A UCLA study recently looked into why the condition attacks the eye sockets. Turns out the problem isn’t all the thyroid‘s fault, but trouble also lies with defective infection fighting T-cells (which mature in our good friend the thymus), which attack the eye tissue.
It’s 12:18 p.m., and by now, the glorious effects of your first coffee of the day are probably wearing off. Before you head off to Starbucks for that second cup, think about your poor adrenal glands. Caffeine gives you a mental boost by firing off neurons in the brain (sounds great, doesn’t it?), which signals the pituitary to secrete hormones that get the adrenal glands to pump your body full of adrenaline. Over time, all this extra adrenal stimulation can wear out the glands, depleting your defense system, according to Natural News. For those of us who love coffee and all it does for big bursts of focus and creativity, this is lousy news, of course. So until you’ve got the guts to quit, just tell your adrenal glands you’re sorry.
Our in-house selection committee member (pictured) randomly picked the two lucky winners of our gland magnet contest — Elizabeth of Michigan and Joanne of Winnipeg! Congrats, ladies. Joanne works in pediatric endocrinology, so she is extra excited to get her happy glands on. Thanks to everyone who played! We hope to have another contest soon, so come back soon.
I’ve been hankering to make a gutsy or glandy magnet set, but these being lean times and all, well, that idea will likely fall into the “make those later” basket. Wouldn’t it be cute to slap a mammary gland on a note to buy more milk? Or perhaps the salivary glands need something mouth-watering? What would the adrenal glands care for — more coffee? I got some magnet sheets and crafted a few handmade gland magnet sets — and you can have one when you win our gland contest! Leave your reply in the comments section below with your name, email (we will not use it for any other purpose other than to contact you and it will not be made public) and the correct answer to this question: “What’s the major difference between endocrine glands and exocrine glands?” Two winners will be chosen at random. Good luck!
There seems to be no end to medical dramas, medical procedurals and just plain ol’ medical general-interest television shows overall, as the new TV season begins. If you’re not watching Private Practice, you might be absorbed by tonight’s season premiere of House, sniffling over the last season of ER, learning about post-op gastric bypass patients on The Doctors (this one’s got real live doctors in it), or checking out Grey’s Anatomy. Noticing all the billboards for these shows around town made me wonder why people are so hungry for shows about medicine. The drama and mystery involved in medicine make it a natural subject for television, of course. But I also wonder if the universal subject matter — we could all fall ill or get hurt at any moment, plus most of us have spent time in a hospital for one reason or another — also makes for popular tubeage. Anyway, who the hell knows?
