Evolution of Medicine Podcast · Functional Forum

Total Load Theory (Featuring: Patricia S. Lemer)

·38 min·2 clips

Patricia S. Lemmer says the hepatitis B shot can trigger drastic change in some newborns within 24 hours.

1. Evolution of Medicine Podcast centers on Patricia S. Lemmer and her Total Load Theory approach to autism, ADHD, LD, SPD, and mental health. 2. Patricia S. Lemmer appears as writer, author, educator, counselor, and licensed professional counselor with more than 40 years of practice, while James hosts and introduces the episode. 3. The episode asks how accumulated stressors, not one diagnosis alone, shape children's brains, behavior, and learning across childhood. 4. Lemmer describes beginning in the late 1960s with children who had Down syndrome, then seeing learning disabilities in the 1970s, ADD in the 1980s, and autism in the 1990s. 5. She says she asked families about breakfast, sleep, outdoor time, and screens because lifestyle factors were part of the picture. 6. Lemmer says children now move less, work in two dimensions on screens, and lose the outdoor play that once came from woods and unstructured movement. 7. She says Total Load Theory looks at what happens when multiple stressors accumulate and the child's body and brain no longer have the bandwidth to compensate. 8. Lemmer says the title changed from Outsmarting Autism to Total Load Theory because neurodiversity changed the audience and she wanted to reach learning disability, attention deficit, and mental health readers too. 9. She says the new edition adds lifestyle and nervous system regulation chapters that were not in the original book. 10. Lemmer links COVID-era masking, isolation, fear, and anxiety to today's five-year-olds, saying they were born during COVID and did not see people smile. 11. She says children's confidence is undermined when parents are helicopters, safety is overemphasized, and kids are kept from learning how to get out of trouble. 12. Lemmer says vision is not just eyesight at 20 feet, but the brain using both eyes together and turning what is seen into concepts. 13. She explains that vision helps a child recognize a face as Mama and helps a person translate symbols like watch hands into meaning. 14. Lemmer recalls early OT-OD collaboration in the 1980s and names Stan, Barbara, Lynn Hellerstein, and Lynn Fishman as part of that work. 15. She says Brian Applebaum's mother was an occupational therapist and that younger clinicians now carry forward this collaborative model. 16. Lemmer describes an AI companion at ai.patricialehmer.com that searches her book and over 100 Autism Detective podcasts, with a planned voice version in 70 languages. 17. The conversation moves quickly, with James prompting broad links between pediatric illness, functional medicine, and brain health. 18. Lemmer speaks in a didactic interview style, using long examples, historical comparisons, and personal memory to make her points. 19. Useful for parents, practitioners, and educators interested in autism, ADHD, and child development. 20. Less useful for listeners wanting a strictly clinical, low-context medical interview.

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