ABSTRACT
Life without stress is impossible, but achieving just the right balance between good stress that arouses and stimulates with just the right amount of distress, a state that taxes and challenges but ultimately is not harmful, is a magnificent balancing act. Although usually oversimplified, the triune model has influenced how the general public thinks about brain functions. The model serves to remind us that stress can be very pervasive and why we must understand that when cognitive abilities are eroded such as in the dementias, we must act as a physical filter to too much or too little stress for those we care for. Progressively lowered stress threshold model that greatly mirrors the proposition of care featuring an awareness of the need to adapt our responses is developed by Hall and Buckwalter. Cyclic interventions based around this model account for the effects of too much stress by facilitating high-functioning lives, but intervening before too much stress becomes a problem.
