Total Load Theory

Transforming Lives in Autism, ADHD, LD, SPD, and Mental Health

Patricia S. Lemer

• Publisher: Childrens Health Defense Books
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781648212048
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

About one in six children and many adults are diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders. What causes autism, attention, learning disabilities, and anxiety?

Patricia Lemer answers that question with a new paradigm: “Total Load Theory.” This etiology fingers not a single cause, but rather a complex combination of biological, environmental, immunological, neurological, psychological, and toxicological load factors.

Lemer provides an in-depth description of underlying stressors and how they accumulate, causing sensory, motor, language, social-emotional, and other symptoms, leading to a diagnosis. By applying this roadmap, families and practitioners can learn how to maximize function in their loved ones and patients.

Reversing poor lifestyle choices around diet, sleep, exercise, along with returning traumatized nervous systems to feeling safe are all crucial. Next steps include enhancing digestion, and immune and endocrine function. Lemer addresses the role of the sensory processing, with an emphasis on vision. She also looks at improving problematic dental structure and function.

The book moves into enhancing language and social-emotional areas at all ages. How these higher-level areas depend on neurological, biological, and sensory integrity are described in detail. The exciting new use of letterboards for communication can be life-changing. 

Several chapters on future planning include options for education, supervised living, employment, and finances. The book ends with a chapter for prospective parents on reducing load factors from preconception.

The future is calling. We must act now, and this book is the perfect guide.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise for Total Load Theory
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by James Maskell
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter 1—Total Load Theory: A New Paradigm for Ending Today’s Epidemic of Chronic Illness
• Chapter 2—Genetic and Environmental Load Factors as Stressors
• Chapter 3—Societal Load Factors
• Chapter 4—Reducing and Eliminating Load Factors Through Lifestyle Changes
• Chapter 5—Testing for Load Factors
• Chapter 6—Feeling Safe by Balancing and Regulating the Nervous System
• Chapter 7—Digestion: The Key to All Health
• Chapter 8—Dietary Dos and Don’ts
• Chapter 9—The Immune System: What Goes Wrong
• Chapter 10—What Do Vaccines Have to Do with It?
• Chapter 11—A Three-Pronged Approach to Healing the Physical Body
• Chapter 12—The Endocrine System and Hormone Disruption
• Chapter 13—Detoxification: Getting the Bad Stuff Out
• Chapter 14—Bioregulatory Medicine
• Chapter 15—Dental Decisions
• Chapter 16—Sensory Processing and Motor Issues
• Chapter 17—Focusing on Vision: The Dominant Sense
• Chapter 18—Improving Communication Skills
• Chapter 19—Social-Emotional Skills
• Chapter 20—Academics: Finally Learning to Read, Write, Spell, and Calculate
• Chapter 21—Transitioning out of School into a Life
• Chapter 22—Living, Employment, and Beyond
• Chapter 23—Having Healthy Babies
• Afterword
• Endnotes
• Index
• About the Author