Put down the cheesecake and step away from the spiked eggnog.
You don't want your heart to look like that atherosclerotic lump of flesh on display at Bodies, an exhibition of sliced-and-diced cadavers at the West End Marketplace.
Premier Exhibitions Inc., the Atlanta-based promoter, bills the show as enlightening, empowering, fascinating and inspiring.
It's also scary, especially during a holiday season of nonstop parties chock full of fat, sugar and adult beverages.
You ought to see that cirrhotic liver riddled with scar tissue -- a testament to the perils of too much drink.
"This is great to see this time of year," said Carmen Schank, a Nevada art teacher who came to North Texas to spend some time with family, including a visit to Bodies. "It's a cautionary tale -- all the trash we put in our bodies."
Schank, 59, peered at a shiny, cancerous kidney under glass.
"I've never seen a tumor before, I don't think," she said.
The 250 specimens of cadavers, cadaver parts and dissected human organs vividly showcase the human body's complexity. The circulatory system of arteries, veins and capillaries is about 60,000 miles long. More than 200 bones and 600 muscles hold the adult body together.
Among the exhibition's many messages: "It's a wonder that something with so many working parts doesn't break down more often."
One mounted cadaver carries a football under his arm in a pose similar to the Heisman Trophy runner. The skin is peeled away to expose every muscle in his body. Eyebrows and eyelashes pasted on the face above prosthetic eyeballs are a bit macabre.
Another cadaver with all its organs and muscles exposed appears to be conducting an orchestra.
Bodies reminds us that we are built like other mammals. The thighbone and surrounding flesh of an amputated upper leg look surprisingly like a holiday ham. The ribs on display, sorry to say, look like those in the meat counter at your neighborhood grocery store.
Nothing is left to the imagination. Everything is preserved in a liquid silicone that hardens into plastic. Embalmers pump the solution into arteries and veins in the lungs, for example. Then, they strip away the flesh, leaving a view of the organ's circulatory system that resembles an ethereal spider web suspended in air.
Traveling exhibits that focus on the human anatomy and all of its systems have come into vogue in the last decade. In 2006, the highly successful Body Worlds made a stop in Dallas. Such exhibits mix science and education with a bit of nakedness that a 10-year-old might find titillating.
Bodies has played around the world since 2005. But this is the exhibit's first trip to Texas. The show has run into trouble in other states and abroad, where some officials have questioned the morality of displaying human body parts for profit. (Tickets cost $14 to $24.)
Last year, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo forced Premier Promotions to prove that it had legally obtained the cadavers and body parts used in the exhibit.
"We provided him all of the information he requested," said Dr. Roy Glover, chief medical director of the Bodies exhibition.
Glover said all of the specimens come from Dalian Medical University in China and doctors there obtained the cadavers under laws similar to those that govern American medical schools.
Nonetheless, the state of Hawaii has banned Bodies and other exhibits like it. And earlier this year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez canceled the show, calling it "a really clear sign of the huge moral decomposition that is hitting our planet."
Glover said the exhibit, which opened Nov. 21, hasn't run into any problems with government officials in Dallas or Texas.
"In instances, there are one or two politicians who get incensed and rally the troops against us," Glover said. "We've been welcomed in Texas."
Glover, who taught anatomy at the University of Michigan medical school, said the show democratizes medical education. The public should be able to see the same things that medical students see when working on a cadaver, he said.
"As long as all rules and laws are followed, then I feel good about allowing the public to be in on this information that is so important to them," Glover said.
Briana Commins, the exhibition's educational outreach coordinator, said Dallas-area teachers have embraced Bodies because it provides schoolchildren with a view of the human body they could never get from books or lectures.
"The message is healthy eating and healthy living and an appreciation for taking care of your bodily systems," said Commins, 22, a recent University of Texas at Dallas graduate.
And the systems on display are impressive. Hanging on one wall is the entire digestive system laid bare from mouth to anus -- esophagus, stomach, 5 feet of large intestine, 22 feet of small intestine and the colon.
The aorta display is truly troubling, which brings us back to the holiday season and the perils of eating and drinking too much.
A healthy aorta sits next to a diseased aorta. The interior of the healthy one is smooth and shiny, a perfect conduit for blood flowing from the heart to the arteries. The diseased aorta, which clearly belonged to someone who should have eaten better, is bumpy and sinewy with plaque.
Glover said he spent 35 years looking at medical school cadavers when he was a teacher. He learned a few things about fat and clogged arteries.
"The message is moderation," he said. "Listen to your body. When it tells you it's full, stop eating. When you feel relaxed from one glass of wine during a meal, your digestion is being helped.
"So stop drinking before you get stuporous."
What: Educational exhibit of more than 250 preserved human specimens
Where: West End Marketplace, 603 Munger St.
When: Through April. Doors open at 10 a.m. seven days a week.
Tickets: Ages 3-12, $14 weekdays, $16 weekends; ages 13-64, $22 weekdays, $24 weekends; senior and military, $18 weekdays, $20 weekends
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