How many would choose this diet?

We are all concerned with our health, right? Let me describe a diet that it seems some you will love to death. The diet is pretty easy as it can or cannot incorporate fast foods and prepared foods into it. It will make little difference in the outcomes either way really. The diet follows the USDA food pyramid. It can avoid those harmful red meats if you wish and certainly enjoy a drink or two of wine or other alcohol daily if you wish. It will work with either low carb or any of the other popular diets de Jour.

You can get plenty of wholesome grains and natural dairy in daily amounts. If you want to avoid refined sugar, you can substitute raw sugar or honey, etc. You can eat many times per day and begin the day with a good breakfast soon after getting up. You can avoid eating late or lightly at the evening meal if you wish.

As one nutritionist said recently; ”it’s better than eating a bag of cheese puffs.” It also may be  better than eating Twinkies and coffee with double cream; no sugar. You can eat plenty of pasta and rice. Carry some food with you so you always have food to eat and eat between meals some ”healthy food” that consists of maybe bananas, apples, pears, etc. A power bar would be good after the workout you will do 3 to 4 times per week with your personal trainer yelling at you to do one more rep. What do you pay these guys and gals? Couple hundred dollars is more than fair as they help you wade through the exercise.

You can always have an egg with Swiss cheese on a rye bagel after they “kicked your butt” in a workout. That’s the stuff; 343 calories, 16 grams fat (7 saturated), 403 mg sodium and inflammation factor rating of -166.  BTW -166 (that’s minus 166) which is classified as “moderately inflammatory”. Those wind sprints at the end of the workout did not help the inflammation either, not to mention the micro trauma on the knees and hips. Since you wanted to exercise to lose weight, assuming you did one hour session of exercise and assuming it matters that calories eaten will determine if you lose or gain weight, that’s about 300 calories burned. Not bad, the bagel sandwich only added about a net 43 calories that will go to fat under this theory. Gosh, that was just one little sandwich at before 7:00 AM! What about the rest of my day? This whole theory depends on the relationship between calories ingested and exercise and how that plays out in the body and that nothing else matters in this exchange i.e. calories eaten Vs calories burned.  It’s all pretty neatly laid out and there are calculators that tell us how many calories burned and ingested.

This diet is the one that most of us follow when we “eat healthy.” How does it work? You judge and decide if you want to go on my diet. In this diet 66% of population is either overweight or obese. That’s just some 205 million of us. The incidence of the higher level of obesity i.e. morbid obesity and super obesity is up markedly in the past 10 years and children are falling into that category. The NFL wants our kids to get out and play more between their Sugar Smacks cereal, cheese burger with fries, pizza, cookies, candy snacks, juices in the little boxes, etc.  

Diabetes (& metabolic syndrome), asthma, cancer, heart disease, arthritis, immune disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and many other diseases are increasing also at alarming rates for people on my diet. BTW, that runner who just dropped over dead recently is said to have had underlying heart disease no one had diagnosed. Too bad, it certainly did not come from his diet as he was Vegan and always did his “carb loading” prior to every marathon or half marathon he ran. He was very fit and really ate healthy. His father died suddenly as well and the fear of dying like his dad was what started him running and why he became Vegan. He was very careful to go to his doctor regularly. Seems there is a lot of that (dropping over dead) going on though.

Does this diet sound pretty good? Is it what you want and what you want your family to follow? Is it what you want to teach your children and grandchildren so they can live long and healthy lives?,

USDA Food Pyramid- old and new

Regina Benjamin, M.D.    United States Surgeon General

Someone said it does not work, but if it does not work why are so many doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, exercise professionals and just plain old health nuts following or recommending parts or all this diet? Why would parts of this diet be in every diet de jour we have seen for the past 50 years? Surely the USDA knows what is good for us to eat; Right? They would not put up a diet pyramid that was not good for us, would they? It’s good that the new Surgeon General looks like the majority of us?

The one thing I have noticed though when I took the time to look at parts of my diet is the good scientific studies don’t seem to support many of the concepts in my diet, but surely all these very educated, successful, beautiful professionals have looked at this as well? All those books that have sold millions of copies must be right? We do understand what it means to “eat healthy,” don’t we?

Who knows what is good for our bodies? Hmmm; I’ll bet the Creator, God knows!

Lord luv Ya!

Information Cascades of Diet and Nutrition

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
Matthew 15:14 (KJV)

 It’s interesting that this passage from the Bible could easily be incorporating the concept of information cascades, sometimes referred to as rational herding, into its relevance. While not all information cascades are wrong or misleading it’s not related to the manner the information cascade evolved that made it that way, but it’s a lucky accident. The process is literally the “blind leading the blind” in informational terms and information is more likely to be inaccurate than not.

A good definition I came across was:

Definition: An information cascade is a situation in which every subsequent actor, based on the observations of others, makes the same choice independent of his/her private signal.

Erroneous Mass Behavior: In an information cascades everyone is individually acting rationally. Still, even if all participants as a collective have overwhelming information in favor of the correct action, each and every participant may take the wrong action. The probability that everyone is taking the wrong action is less than 50%, but it is easy to construct examples in which everyone is wrong with 30-40% probability. [1]

 There is a wealth of information on the web site referenced above. What does that have to do with Senior Physical Therapist?

It seems that no where do we find more information cascades than we do in the area of diet and nutrition. It should be noted that even the most scientific based communities are at risk to fall into information cascades. Part of the phrase “science has changed” is maybe some modification of an information cascade or the appearance of a new or modified one.

I have been asking myself now for months:

How can so many people, even those who should know better, continue to believe that calorie restriction diets, with or without exercise, is effective, even basic, to success. All the evidence documents that this concept alone fails with all groups over the long run.

Also:

Exercise employed as a weight loss modality fails with every group over the long run.

 Now before everyone rises up in protest, read the words carefully. It is probable that the number of calories ingested has some connection with weight and maybe even weight loss. Exercise, done properly, is very beneficial; it’s just not a successful modality to lose weight. The way exercise is promoted by so many of our knuckle dragging Neanderthal exercise gurus is downright harmful. The arguments you will see that seem to refute the two above observations are with individuals and not groups. They are not followed over the long term. Many of us have lost weight over short term, but somehow it reappears plus plenty more, typically not too much later. Even the seemingly great results reported by Bariatric Surgery fail at between 5 to 10 years. No group post op achieves normal weight and health status for their ages.

I don’t know what happens when these information cascades exist literally for a lifetime i.e. we first learned and believed them as children. The restricted calorie theory falls into this category. We subsequently had them reinforced so many times and from so many good sources, I suspect they will be very resistant to correction. One BIG problem is they do not work. The result is an ever increasing incidence of the problem. When the problem gets to the numbers of overweight and obese we have (66%) in the USA we have vastly exceeded any easy point of having counter information to combat this information cascade. This occurring in the presence of extensive and copious information documenting this theory is not that relevant and then the good studies document they do not work. We must examine the fallacious theory that has grown to acceptance so widely. It is literally the blind leading the blind.

But still we cling to the misguided notion and persist in trying over and over and of course they fail again and again for as many times as we insist on expecting a different result. Meanwhile the problems exacerbate to the point of being a national health epidemic the like never seen in the history of the world. Sad thing there is no solution in sight. Only the oft repeated old failed strategies.

If the solution is not restricted calories and exercise, what is it? This same answer will apply to all the other “diet’s de jour” that we are constantly barraged by in ever imaginative ways. All these now for at least the past 50 years yield the same boring results: Failure with groups of people over time.

What will work? Note the body’s response to the individual foods eaten. If the ingested foods cause the body to respond with production of inflammation, that is not a food that is good for us to eat. In its simplest form, this is the crux of the problem, but the implementation is so much more complicated. The information is available for us to use in designing a program to get the desired results without trial and error.

There are several aspects of food that need to be juggled and monitored by the body’s response to them. There are also strategies used in concert with the food we ingest that is very important as well. Frankly I am not sure how this plays out in someone of relatively good (normal) weight and normal inflammatory markers, but I know that most of us who are sometimes very obese and suffer the associated health problems, it is a very complicated and fragile relationship. The alternatives are likely to be severe chronic health problems and premature death. It is not a good state of affairs when the most reliable information from an information cascade is severe health problems and premature death occurring in about two thirds of the population and that number is escalating rapidly.

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[1]  Information Cascades and Rational Herding: An Annotated Bibliography and Resource Reference, Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, Ivo Welch,: http://www.info-cascades.info/

Christmas Eve 2009; A historic day

Having spent my adult life working within the health care industry and the last seven years encountering the system via health problems for myself and family I know it very well. As imperfect as it was it somehow spawned the best system in the history of mankind. The greatest country in the history of mankind would have expected no less.

Note the past tense verbiage; as that has now changed or at least it appears to have changed. This morning the United States Senate passed their version of a national health care bill. This seems destined to meld with the much worse bill passed in the House of Representatives previously. Having just typed the word “representatives” it occurs to me that term is ironic. Who do they represent? Not the people, but I digress from the point of this blog.

It seems appropriate they also raised the national debt limit to 12.4 Trillion dollars. We are drowning in debt and functionally bankrupt. So they print some more money and move the problem to a future edition of politicians. The ploy is for them, the perpetrators, to not have to pay the piper for their avarice. This seems to be considered a successful strategy of deceit employed routinely through this whole financial series of assaults on our country by our representatives. .

This is a historic day. As President Roosevelt said long ago, one that “will live in infamy.” We are told that once we embark on this path we cannot ever go back to the system that spawned the greatest system in the history of mankind. I am not Nostradamus so I will not try to imagine how the system will soon begin to deteriorate. I am though absolutely certain that you cannot take 500 billion dollars from the Medicare part of the system, when Medicare was already in the process of failing financially and administratively; then double account for the use of that money and it be the keystone of the new financial strategy for our national health system a la our political establishment. This is the new accounting. Now, you can use the same money twice? This same money cannot extend the failing Medicare system for 10 years and also pay for the addition of 30 million new people to be covered in our health care system. Both of these objectives will fail absent huge injections of real money into the system. Guess where that will come from? The system is in peril of being strangled to death by debt and the resultant poor service that will ensue as the politicians attempt to cover up this monumental atrocity being perpetuated upon us all. The free market system is dead today in the health care sector of our economy. You remember the free market system? It was that unique system that made us great and different than the rest of the world and allowed us to be a beacon of hope and prosperity envied by the rest of the world. The system is being assaulted now in a way that could mean collapse of the system financially and maybe us as a nation since health care is such a huge part of our free market system. The only source to pay for this insanity is from the people and we are already on life support financially from the greed and blunders of our government and financial institutions. So we will not have the money to either save the remaining segments of Medicare nor pay for all the additions of the new system. This is quite clear and is really no surprise.

Another sadness comes to mind today over this debacle. It is being perpetuated squarely upon the Vietnam generation as we arrive in our social security and Medicare years. While the old solders may get better care than the rest of us, we know it was not always that way. Many who did not serve directly in the military during these turbulent years suffered right along with the solders when they came home and the years thereafter. That suffering seems now destined to continue now for the rest of their lives We now change the system that has cared for us all these many years in a way that this generation will have to endure yet another great insult and assault upon it.

This national health system evolving right now is about the politicians and not the people. They will work very hard in the days, weeks, months and years to come to convince us otherwise. The main stream media will barrage us with false information, partial truths and outright lies to convince many of us somehow this is a good thing. This mainstream media somehow is melded seamlessly with the dastardly politicians. They all are in concert with the very liberal institutions like the AARP. And how did they seduce the AMA or was the AMA already lost politically?

Today it’s Christmas Eve in the year of our Lord 2009. Today we need to pray to God that somehow we can change this course that will kill the greatest health care system as we celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus..

God bless you all. I know God will identify to us a way, somehow, to survive the evil we see transpiring right before our eyes in full daylight. I suspect God knows that we, the people, must take our country and affairs back from these dishonest people. These people we entrusted to look after our best interests. Today is a clear sign they are working only for their selfish interests. It is consistent that they (our representatives) then have the temerity to shove this down our throats.

Lord Luv Ya!

Beneficial Effects of Exercise

Once in awhile a sane voice in in the confused misguided shouting crowd is so encouraging that someone is able to pay attention to the subject and not go with the popular misconceptions.

See the study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine on the Beneficial Effects of Exercise.

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2009/09/29/bjsm.2009.065557.abstract

One of the beneficial affects IS NOT WEIGHT LOSS. They got it right exactly.

Now if they will do a study that demonstrates the beneficial health effects, with or without exercise, on a diet that is at least 4 to 1 ratio (or lower) Omega 6 fatty acids as contrasted to Omega 3 fatty acids it will be further positive contribution to this huge problem.

The scientific literature is replete with this important relationship in our diet and the good health that will result including weight management.

They all fail?

You would think one could be happy and encouraged as they seriously approach losing 70 pounds? This occurring after a lifetime of obesity beginning in childhood. In the fifth grade (a long time ago as I am now 66 years old) I weighed 150 pounds. Except for a brief few years in my early 20’s it’s mostly been increasing weight until 360 plus pounds in 2002 when I had my heart attack. At that point I slowly went down to 313 pounds before going back up to 342 pounds in April, 2009. This after Maryann was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer in 2005. The life changing event that occurred about April 2009 was I became aware that fat is one of the many inflammatory disorders we suffer from daily. These inflammatory disorders are created from our diet and lifestyle

One of the best books I found that led to my greater understanding of the problem was Monica Reinagel’s, The Inflammation Free Diet Plan. I was subsequently surprised to find the data and information that was readily available on this subject was huge, very scientific and literally poured out of each Google search. This was a revelation for me personally and began me on the path that appears I am finally able to lose all this weight that was killing me. My concentration (obsession?) with this area combined with my background in Physical Therapy has provided great success not only in my life but the lives of some of my family and our animals. I am doing remarkable things with our dogs; suffering at the effects of commercial dog foods, but that’s another blog for another day. It’s only relevant because it has provided me with a laboratory of subjects, human and animal to observe the results from ingesting a diet that is not inflammatory or at least combat the really poor diet we inflict upon our poor pets, upon ourselves and our families really. I am also following this area now very closely. God has called me to offer whatever meager information and encouragement I can into this vast wasteland of misinformation and insanity.

So why would I be a bit sad this morning? I am stunned by what is happening in this area. It’s hard to stay positive in the midst of complete abject failure. I speak of this area in general. My personal success is almost too good to be true. Abject failure is what I have to label the success and likelihood of improvement from the current measures being offered from really all sources to the public. Sixty six (66%) percent of people in the USA are overweight and the numbers are rising so fast it’s mind boggling. The problem is so great we are actually adjusting our clothes sizes up to mentally create the illusion that we are still a size 6. Every strategy from essentially every group has failed completely. The experience is so dismal that it must be so devastating the professionals in this area that they have escaped into denial in the face of the overwhelming facts. They all acknowledge the really serious nature of the problem that nothing has made a difference, but somehow continue to offer nothing but the same old tired failed strategies over and over again. That is the definition of insanity we joke about, but this is no joke. I understand that they are confused and desperately seeking something. So let’s try that old failed idea again now for the thousandth time? It must work or I don’t know what else to tell these good folks who are depending on me to help them? I am the expert so I must know? I am not sure exactly what is occurring; only what it looks like. Remember I said the data and information is out there in spades indicating that inflammation is the cause (result). We also know how to diminish inflammation with diet, supplements, therapeutic interventions and lifestyle modifications.

Obesity is just the tip of the iceberg as its only one of the many disorders caused by our diet and lifestyle that results in a generalized inflammatory condition in the body. The thing that is unique about obesity is that the fat becomes an inflammatory generating system itself and significantly adds to the misery of the condition over time. That may be true of other conditions as well, as in all honesty I may not know that, but the evidence with fat is clear and not open for debate in any honest and credible forums.

I am sad because I have just observed someone who has made one of the most important contributions in the history of mankind for the potential solving of this huge problem “seem to me” to back away from their own wonderful work. I see them promoting such absurd things as every other day fasting and offering to me the gentle admonishment that I am overestimating the role of inflammatory diet on obesity. If I did not have my clinical background, education and professional knowledge as well as a lifetime of personal experience I might be dissuaded from this approach. This approach is one that holds such genuine hope for resolution of the big overall problem; resolution that I personally am experiencing and observing as I write this. That would be a personal tragedy. That would also remove one relevant proponent from a strategy that holds some real promise.

My prayer this morning is we all seek guidance and wisdom from our Lord and Creator. If we listen to Him he will lead us to the path of what is right for us all in this area. That must certainly include stop eating foods that create inflammation in the body He created. It can include other measures designed to combat and diminish the inflammation we have already created in our bodies and in those who we feed and nurture.

That is important stuff and what God wishes for us all.

Lord love ya!

Coca-Cola, I love you, but please wake up!

 Headline:

Coca-Cola Co said on Wednesday it will launch 90-calorie mini cans of soda to help consumers manage their calorie intake.

 I just watched Coke’s new roll out video on its reduced calorie product. Sugar loaded Coke claiming that reduced calories will result in weight loss. A losing strategy for sure, but one that is promoted by many. The insanity continues and is politically correct.
Calorie reduction as it’s presently promoted will not decrease or prevent the incidence of being overweight and it is already 66% nationally. How many think that a product loaded with sugar will decrease overweight incidence? According to many, us fat slobs will simply drink more of those adorable little cans anyway. Somehow it’s always us. I guess because we are the fat ones, but we have a lot of company, like 200 million others who are fat also.
If you want to see their sound bites and video you can go to:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=multimedia_detail&newsId=20091014005941&newsLang=en&contentGroupId=1865472

This is a complicated problem. Coke and the other soft drink manufactures are in the political line of fire. The government has decided to penalize them by taxing us. How does that work? This may be part of Coke’s reaction to this political issue. Truth is, none of them understand the problem.

It is not a problem of calorie limiting or reduction. So how could these measures make any difference in being overweight?

Coke is a good company that has lost its way here. It has happened before. Coke if you are listening and you need to be paying attention; you must begin by being an agent for education and change in the ideas that will make a difference. I realize you have a product (your core product) that causes problems, but you have products that will actually give that little bit of daily pleasure and also not cause inflammatory problems in the body from the sugar that is in your original Coke. That is not a bad place to start. It’s certainly better than the tobacco companies had when confronted with a growing national awareness with its problem product that was a public health menace.

Faberge Eggs? No, super high Omega-3 essential fatty acid eggs.

I love eggs. Always did, but it was popular and partially true that eggs that were mass produced were not always healthy for us. That is still true, but eggs are officially classified as the most complete and almost 100% digestible protein. They are also cheap. So the trade off had been to limit the ingestion of the cholesterol in eggs for the super protein and quality of the food.

That has changed in the last few years. High Omega-3 essential fatty acid eggs are really here. Our goal for good health should be to balance the ingestion of Omega-6 essential fatty acids with the Omega-3 essential fatty acids at 1 to 1 ratio. Not the 20 to 1 ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 we see in our diets today. This high Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio is responsible for many of the health problems that is epidemic and the prime culprit of the obesity epidemic. Think about this fact. About 66% of the American population is overweight. That is over 200 million of us. In an election that would be a landslide win of historic proportions. The epidemic occurring right before us is one of historic size. It is one never seen in the history of the world and is making biblical plagues seem minor by size comparison.

So what is more valuable, a Faberge Egg or a super Omega-3 essential fatty acid egg that is high Omega-3 essential fatty acids and, just as important, balanced 1 to 1 with Omega-6 fatty acids?

They are still cheap at about $2.30 a dozen (regular large eggs were selling for $0.89 a dozen). I got mine at Kroger in Jefferson, Georgia but they are universally available at many stores such as Wal-Mart. The eggs I speak of are under the Private Selection Kroger brand, but produced by Christopher Eggs in Pinehurst, NC.  They have 660 mg Omega-3 essential fatty acids.

We have to start somewhere cutting the amount of Omega-6 fatty acids in our diet and increasing the amount of Omega-3 fatty acids. Where better to start than with an almost perfect protein that is essentially 100% digestible and cheap by comparison to other high Omega-3 fatty acid protein foods?

Dr. Barry Sears: A pioneer in the fight against chronic inflammation through diet.

Barry Sears, Ph.D.; a biochemist, is one of the leading authorities in the area of alerting us all about the dangers of inflammation (he calls it silent inflammation) in the body. Dr. Sears has had a bestselling book the Zone Diet.

He is one of the few that make real sense in this area and is a true pioneer in this still vastly unrecognized area. The evidence is pouring in on the association of many contemporary health problems that are exploding worldwide from chronic inflammation in our bodies resulting from our diets and lifestyles. Dr. Sears approach is just slightly different than mine to combat the problem(s), but we should not have a “nickel’s” worth of difference on the concept and how to arrive at a successful point in our eating and lifestyle. Dr. Sears recommends taking dietary supplements of fish oil combined with his Zone Diet. I am having success with watching closely the IF rating of all the foods ingested, and keep the IF rating at over 200 per day for the Therapeutic Level of the Therapeutic Diet. I am also raising the level of Omega 3 fatty acids in comparison to Omega 6 fatty acids as does Dr. Sears’ approach. I do not recommend now against the supplements, but believe we can do without them if we follow the daily ingestion of food properly. My mind is open though and if I gravitate more to Dr. Sears’ model, I will say so and quickly.

My immediate impression is that taking supplements of fish oil will be infinitely cheaper than getting enough fish and other high Omega 3 fatty acids in the diet. Also, the problems with contamination of our wild fish supplies and the pit falls of farming fish in species such as salmon might in the end be the best approach. I am still reluctant to abandon the strict adherence of the relationship between the ingestion of Omega 3 fatty acids and Omega 6 fatty acids.

There should be some middle ground for both. There is only so much we can get away with in altering the formula that God created our bodies to ingest. We have done enough harm all ready, but this is very interesting and needs a close look and try.

I would recommend that you all go to Dr. Sear’s web site at:

http://www.drsears.com/

There is a wealth of information and resources there.

Some not so simple truths!

I am learning a lot about dealing with major problems that involve inflammation such as morbid obesity. The condition is a very complex interconnected one that looking back on my beginning I was quite naive to believe that simply putting the right food into my mouth would result in success. Even though that was the first and maybe the most important initial step, it goes further. My continual study of the area identified that the basis of the problem and many others is the inflammation in the body likely started by our diets and lifestyle.

I have been frustrated by the ignorance in the face of tremendous research and data available. Data that is not been interpreted to mean what it indicates because of popularly accepted theories that have become preset ideas about the diet and causation. There are so many beautiful studies whose results are being compromised by assuming theories never proved. These theories are accepted as fact by years of repeated statement when that proof simply does not exist. Too many examples to list any here, but they are everywhere I turn. Once the mindset is adjusted to purge it of these unproven and all too frequently false theorems, the path is so much clearer. I shudder to hear the term “eat healthy” or “eat right”, because what the actual practice behind these statements usually show is eating too many foods that are not good for the body.

I am having serious success, but also meeting unexpected barriers in the process. These barriers cause me to find out what is happening in my own body. The simple notion that the long term remedy is simply a dietary issue is yielding to the truths required by a multifaceted approach. My life experience and study of the data and research continue to tweak my approach and knowledge in this area. I am graced by more in-depth knowledge how to succeed against this very serious complicated medical condition that the data says I have ZERO chance of long term success.

You can find out more about my experiences these past few months at:

http://www.josephbgentzel.com/seniorphysicaltherapisthome.htm

See My Diet Diary there to see how my experience has evolved my knowledge and approach over the past few months.

Playing over the ashes of Lewis Grizzard

Sanford Stadium, Athens, Georgia

I woke up in the middle of the night this morning complaining of ole folks problems. It occurred to me the eternal cycle of life goes on a when I saw the hall light of Gillianne, my baby and my only daughter, coming to her room at about 2:00 AM. I am up with aches and pains in the shoulder from being blessed by God to live as long as I have and my baby, at 21, is just going to bed. The meeting of the generations I guess.

Gillianne never knew of Lewis Grizzard. He was dead just a few years after God blessed us with her birth. She might not know who he is even. I got to tend a bit more to that girl’s upbringing I think. How could any GRITS (Girl raised in the south) have a proper upbringing without appreciating the tortured reverent writing of one of the greatest writers and humorists that ever pecked at an old typewriter? She being a student at University of Georgia and all, it seems fit that she know and appreciate this guy who we all read and loved so dearly 15 plus years ago. The vivid memory of getting a chance to see the Dawgs play at Sanford Stadium on one of our glorious fall days some 20 years ago, when the genteel sounds of the surrounding chatter was punctuated with; “Did you read Grizzard this morning” comments stays with me today. That’s one of the nice things about being “senior” and goes along with the aches and pains part for sure. Everyone read Lewis, especially on a football weekend in Georgia. You had too; he spoke to you in print like few ever did. You could cry at the beginning of the sentence and be hooting with laughter by the end. Such was the power and talent of Lewis Grizzard. Lewis, football and the still romantic souls of our southern heritage lived, loved, witnessed and played football at Sanford Stadium. So we had to read what Lewis said about the Dawgs or about those folks to the west, “Ala Damn Bamma.”. What does all this have to do with Senior Physical Therapist? I guess I am writing about the senior part this morning at 3:30 AM.

Today the Georgia Bulldogs play LSU at Sanford Stadium. LSU, number four in the country, against Georgia with its classic overachiever quarterback, Joe Cox, porous pass defense, and yet to be decided running back star will play over Lewis’s ashes. Hopefully not too much, as his ashes were scattered on the fifty yard line. The Dawgs need to spend more time on LSU’s end of the field on both sides of the ball. LSU needs to be careful though or Lewis will ‘will’ his beloved Dawgs to victory from his internment on this hallowed fall spectacle venue. Hopefully he can get God to watch the game with him and Catfish. That will help I think. Georgia needs all the help it can muster today.

We send our love and best wishes to Larry Munson who just turned 87 on the 28^th of September, 2009.We pray he is well and happy. Go Dawgs!