The Doctor Behind Incredible Transformations Dr. Richard Jones Part 2

🎙️ The Doctor Behind Incredible Transformations | Part 2 | The Fortified Podcast

In Part 2 of The Fortified Podcast, Dr. Richard Jones shares his powerful journey through obesity, diabetes, vision loss, adversity, and recovery while helping others transform their lives through wellness, hormone optimization, longevity, and whole-body health.

Learn how mindset, persistence, and small daily actions can create life-changing results. Dr. Jones discusses weight loss, mental health, stress management, first responders, veterans, hormone therapy, and building a healthier future one step at a time.

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Mental Health & Anxiety
Hormone Optimization
Longevity & Wellness
PTSD & First Responder Health
Veteran Wellness Programs
Building a Fortified Life

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Transcript

Dustin Haney 0:06

Well then you think of the person that wakes up supposed to be at the gym at seven, they wake up, oh, I'm just tired today, my back's a little achy. Yeah. I'm not gonna go to the gym. Yeah, I'm gonna do this. No, I'm gonna call in from work too. Yeah. And then you, you know, what is that level of an issue compared to what others might have? And they're still getting out of bed, still going to the gym, still going to work and getting those four things in for the day.

Dr. Jones 0:34

Yeah. I mean, the the workout stuff was about 3, 4 a.m. in the morning. And, you know, so and I wasn't getting much sleep. I mean, I was getting two, three, four hours of sleep a night, which was not good.

Dustin Haney 0:45

Yeah. So what was your weight at that time? When did this weight gain become an issue?

Dr. Jones 0:50

Yeah, so I mean, uh so when I came out of the army, I was I was lean. I mean, I I I was a I was an endurance athlete in the army. I was running about four, thirty-minute miles back then. And uh um, you know, I was maxing the PT tests and everything else. So, you know, I was fit and lean, young, but I gained some weight after that. Um, I came out of that. I actually did a couple half marathons and a biathlon. I can't swim to competitively do anything. I can swim to keep my head above water, but not competitively. So I did biking and running. So I did a couple biathlons. I did um, like I said, a half marathon, and then um I was in Colorado. So I was like, well, let me go ahead and I'll do a marathon. It's like I don't need to run 26.2, but let me do it one time for just for the sake of it. I'm in Colorado and it was like, oh, the Boston, this and that. I was like, well, what what's the mother of all marathons? And anybody in the world, I think, is gonna say it's a Pike's Peak marathon. So you start at the bottom of the Pike's Peak, you run up to the top of it at 14,000 feet, and then you run back down at 13 miles up and 13 miles down on a on a mountain, you know. So I was training for that. Uh, when I did that, I ended up with I basically I blew my tibbies apart because I overtrained them and and I ripped them apart from just too much training. So I ended up with stress fractures all over my leg. And so I had to rehab that, and that was kind of the end of my training from a running standpoint perspective. And so then I started doing some weight training. I really enjoyed that, but physically I'm not genetically built for it. You know, I'm not gonna be a big munch of anything because that's I was built for more endurance type stuff, you know. I mean, I could go out and it would take me 12 miles to get a runner's high going at that point, and it was no big deal, you know. So genetically, that's how I was built. But I started enjoying the weight training. So I did some weight training, did powerlifting and some strength training. What was for my level, not good for everybody else's level, but for my level.

Dustin Haney 2:42

Same thing in longevity, though, is just keep that lean muscle as long as you can, keep working it, even if it's a few years ago.

Dr. Jones 2:47

Metabolically added burning calories, type of thing. Yeah, yeah. So did that, and then you know, before that I gained a little bit of weight, you know, and I gained some size at that point, but I was still pretty decent back then. But then Connor was born, and that's when things started cratering on me, and I just wasn't working out. I was focused on them, and that's when the weight came on. So stress, cortisol. All of it, yeah, just the whole nine yards. You know, I was coming home late, sitting down, eating dinners, and then going to bed and not working out, and yeah, just the whole nine yards, you know. And it it's it's a it's a reason. Call it an excuse, I guess, if you want, but that was the reality I was in. It wasn't, I mean, I could have done better and I should have done better, but it is what it was. I think it's happened to everybody, you know. Yeah, yeah, it was what it was.

Dustin Haney 3:29

So I think we got to get past the part of whatever happened to get you there. Yeah, it's what you did after it to correct it. Yeah, you know, it's okay. I mean, but you went from what weight to what weight. Well, uh as I mentioned before, I I I don't know.

Dr. Jones 3:43

I was at least 353. 353. 353, because I quit weighing on the scale at 353. Um because that's hopefully we can get that side-by-side picture of your 353 to where you're at today. Because that's well, that was about that was about 340, I think, 330 in that picture. But I kept that one too because it it's a reminder of of how to take care of yourself too. Because I had a big stupid little ice cream sundae in front of me, and I ate that whole thing, you know, at that point in time. I can do that. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, well, the reason I looked at it because I was eating that. So, you know, I show it to my patients now. We have a weight loss program, and I mean, I've got a guy right now, he's a 400 plus pounder, and he's wanting to lose, you know, 150, 200 pounds. And he's like, Yeah, we're gonna do a year-long journey. We'll do this, it's gonna take you a year, but we'll do it. And he's like, I'm in. And so, you know, I show him this, it's like we've got to change this and change that, you know. But it's a neast thing I can really relate to these people when they come in, and you know, it's like been there, done that. I know what it feels like, you know. Sleep apnea and all this stuff. I was pre-diabetic more than likely. I wasn't monitoring the stuff, who knows? But I wasn't diabetic yet. But after the fire flashed, I um before that, I already started dropping some weight, just working out, cleaning up diet, that sort of stuff. I had done some of it. But then when the fire hit, I became full-blown diabetic afterwards. Yeah, my A1C hit 13, it went through the roof. I mean, I it was bad, you know. I ended up from the fire, I had to get lens transplants because the cataracts, and I I was legally blind and all this stuff. And so at the same time, I ended up with retinopathy in the back of my eyes. So I was getting injections to reduce the retinopathy. So literally, I had needles stuck in my eyeballs, and uh so yeah, yeah, I couldn't figure that one out. That was a fun experience.

Dustin Haney 5:37

So, you know, you got all that stuff, you put on all that weight. You know, I watched that my biggest loser, and I watched the my 600-pound life and see these people lose a lot of weight, and they then their skin issues arise. They have to have the skin surgeries, and you know, it's kind of it's hard to understand, and a lot of those folks don't make the journey. They give up, they don't see the end of it, it's gonna take too long, I can't do it, and they just give up and they don't even try. You're getting needles stuck in your eye, way overweight, all these medical issues and problems. What made you push through it and stick with it and recover from it? You know, why what makes you do that instead of just saying, I'm too far gone, you know, to hell with it.

Dr. Jones 6:20

Yeah. You know, again, everybody's gotta make their decision on what they how they want to address a problem. In my in my mind, I I thought it wasn't the right thing to just give up and like forget it, I'm gonna kill myself, you know. Um there's there's uh there's a statistic the statistical probability of your existence. Have I have I mentioned this to you before? I haven't heard. So do you do you know what that is? The statistical probability that you exist is about one in one hundred trillion. And and so i that's a number that's astronomical, it's almost inconceivable what that number means or what it is. And so all the generations and bloodline before you that came to you that had to exist in order for you to be put into existence, you know, an egg and a sperm, you know, uh all this stuff that has to come together, you know, it has to fertilize, it has to migrate through a floping tube, it has to embed into your uterine wall, it has to live for 10 months, and then it's been in a fluid environment, and then you have to get spit out into a world of oxygen, spit out all the fluid and take a breath and actually breathe oxygen for the first time, and nobody ever taught you how to do that. You just do it. So you put all this together and you think about one in one hundred trillion, and it is a literal, uh unequivocal miracle that you exist as a human being. There's no other way that you can there's no other way to say there's a one in one hundred trillion chance that you exist without saying it's a miracle. So if the fact that a human being exists and that it's a miracle that they exist, then that's a blessing that they've been given, and they need to do something with that blessing. You know?

Dustin Haney 8:03

Wow. I have never heard that. But yeah, you think about it.

Dr. Jones 8:07

Yeah, that's uh yeah. It's like overpopulation, you know, this person, oh we gotta depopulate, blah, blah, blah, whatever. It's like all the all all the opportunities, if there's five billion, all the opportunities of that didn't create life that happened to get that five billion, you know. But it's but it's a miracle. Every single human being that exists is a literal miracle at that point in time. So the fact that you're a little literally standing there being alive is a miracle. In my mind, you you you damn well better do something to celebrate that. Otherwise, what's the point? You know, you were given a miracle, so what are you gonna do about it? You know?

Dustin Haney 8:43

So I like to tell people just a little bit each day, you know, keep going a little bit each day. Yeah. And before you know it, you look back and go, wow, I made big steps.

Dr. Jones 8:54

Yeah. Well, there's an old adage, and and again, you probably know the answer to it, but I'll tell it's the same thing. When I when a patient comes in and they're they've got autoimmune problems, they got weight problems, they can't sleep, they've got trauma and TBI from a car wreck, or they got chronic back pain, and they got three or four or five of these things stacked, and they're trying to fix this over here and it doesn't work. They try to go over here, it's piecemealed all together, and they can't put anything together. And so I talked to them and we put a program together to start reworking them and rebuilding them. But, you know, the old saying is, and I asked them, I literally asked them, I said, there's an old saying is how do you eat an elephant? And you know, so what's the answer to that? One bite at a time. So what do you do? You start taking bites, and eventually you keep being persistent and tenacious, and you'll eat the elephant. But you can't stop. You got to keep eating. Yeah, you know, but you can't eat the whole thing. When you look at it, it's too much. It's overwhelming, it's insurmountable. I can't eat that, but you keep doing it, and guess what? Then you do it again, and then guess what? You do it again and over and over and over, and eventually the elephant's gone, you know, because you keep working at it. If you're doing the right thing and you keep being persistent about doing the right thing, not every single time, of course, but the vast, vast majority of times you keep doing the right thing over and over and over, you're gonna get the right outcome to happen. Yeah. You know, not every time. There's problems, and there's always gonna be a problem.

Dustin Haney 10:17

But the huge majority of the time it's gonna work. Yeah, it's nice to see um all the trials and tribulations you went through and where you're at today, because it's people think uh, I think a lot of people see successful people, um, heart surgeons, whatever, and it's like, oh, he was born, his family has a lot of money, they sent him to school, he went right through medical school, now he's a surgeon, and no problems. But most people that hit these levels have to fight through and go through things and keep pushing through to get there and hit their goals. Your story is like, holy crap. I mean, holy crap. I mean, people see you today would never think about all the things you actually went through, and you're still doing what you're doing to help other people.

Dr. Jones 11:02

You know, I mean, I I've definitely had some rough stuff, you know, and I don't look at other things, you know. I look at other situations like like my son Connor. I'm not the one that has to live in the skin that has the injury that he's gonna have to deal with for the rest of his life. I'm just the one on the outside that I've got to be ripped apart and I've got to deal with that, you know, in my own problem. But I I'm not the one with the problem. He's the one that's gonna have the problem. So who's got the worst issue here? It's not me. It's him. You know, before that, you know, I came from a pretty blue-collar family. I mean, we weren't, you know, destitute on the street or anything, but we weren't more much bored than that. And you know, um I was the first one in my family ever to go to college, and then I ended up with four degrees from going to college. And uh my wife, on the other hand, sadly, she came from a rough life. She had a dysfunctional, broken home, and she ended up because it was a better situation than her environment that she was in, running away and living on the streets. So she was 14 years old, homeless, living in porches and dumpsters. So me complaining about, oh, poor me doing this and that, and my wife has been in a place where she's fending for herself, living in, you know, trash cans at 14 years old, trying to figure out how she's gonna survive. So, what what big deal is my problem? There's always somebody that has it worse than us, huh? Yeah, yeah. So there's a little there's a little video I've seen, and um, I'm gonna probably butcher this up a little bit, but there's um there's this guy um that gets out of a car and he's got like a cast on his leg and he's kind of limping and he's complaining about you know wearing a cast and something, and then there's a guy who walks down the street and he's got like both broken legs on crutches, and he's like, Man, it would be nice if I could only have one broken leg and walk in a cast. And then he walks by a guy in a wheelchair that's paralyzed in a wheelchair, and the guy in the wheelchair is looking at the guy with the two legs and the cast, going, Man, it would only be nice if I could walk on both my legs. And then the guy with the wheelchair has there's another like quadriplegic. It's like, man, it would be nice if I could push the arms on my wheelchair so I could roll. So, you know, the problem only is a matter of perspective of what your problem is. Yeah, right. The point being is somebody else's idea of insurmountable is somebody else's idea of utopia, you know. Right, right, right.

Dustin Haney 13:22

So, you know, the thing um I've worked, we've been open almost three years now, and I've been dealing with hormone balancing and longevity and age management, and um just trying to learn all I can learn probably over the last 15, 20 years, literally. And then trying to build a program at Fortified for our members and things to help them age well, age happy. Uh, and it's been rough because I've I've found, you know, when this testosterone thing came out, for example, hot and heavy, you know, all doctors started saying, come by our office once a week, $25, we'll give you a shot of testosterone. And then estrogen levels started going up and blood started thickening and all this different thing. We weren't balancing the whole entire hormonal panel. So we've been working on that truly very diligently here, trying to figure out how we can help. And we've ran into cash pay scenarios where it's a lot of cash pay. Yes, you can come to the doctor and we'll charge your insurance for labs and and your doctor visit, but if you need any peptides or any other help, or if you want to do this or that, it's gonna be cash pay. Um so I want to go into now your program of of attacking the issue of helping people. You know, for example, you come to your office and you you charge for a doctor visit, and you do more than just a doctor visit. When you're more than willing and able to do a visit and then turn right around and charge for all this other stuff, maybe some therapy or an adjustment or whatever, you know. Yeah, but instead you're taking that and giving back, you know, quite a bit of your own time and your own income to truly, I think I see the desire to truly help folks and better their lives. So let's go down like how Apex One came about and the programs you started through it, and how you're helping people today.

Dr. Jones 15:19

Sure, sure. So it's it's it's it's it's very weird, surreal almost in your in your mind. I remember having dreams of something like this back in high school. It it goes back that far for me. You know, even wanted to go to veterinarian school, but I still remember having dreams about man, it would be cool if you had a place that people could exercise and work out, but they could get medical care, they could do this, they could do that, they could do all these things in one place, kind of thing, you know, one way or the other. And so I think some of it started back in that time period. Um but yeah, I I you you you go to a place over here and you get a little piece here. And then maybe you go over here and you get another little piece of something. But are the pieces the right thing? And and I I guess it's just a way on how you look at the body too. Some people look at the body and compartmentalize it into systems and you know, individual systems that you work on as a as a as a systems combined approach. But I look at it as kind of a whole integrated environment. I mean, this part works on that part, that part works on that part, and it's all kind of interconnected together to make it work. So, you know, that's approach we try to take in a lot of cases. We'll have, you know, like this weight loss scenario. Let's just talk about, you know, that real briefly. I mean, we'll help help people come in, but hormones out of balance. They have inflammation, yeah, they may have elevated anxiety levels and cortisol and this and that and everything else going on. Now, because of all that, they want to lose weight because they have this problem or that problem. Their doctor said, Well, you need to lose weight, so go get a you know, GLP or a GIP or something to lose some weight. Well, they've got all of that stuff going on, and that needs to be fixed so that their body can reset and be happy enough to want to give up the weight. Because if you're in a fight or flight mode all the time, you've got this neurological response that's driving the hormone system to put out these stress hormones that's gonna tell your body to do this versus do that. Like we're living in a cave and we're gonna be starving for the next four months in the cave, so we better release some cortisol so we can stack some more belly fat on so we can get enough calories to get through the the winter because of the cave we're living in. Or the saber-toothed tiger that's chasing me, I better get away from it so it doesn't eat me, so I better pick up the pace and I'll make my heart repeat faster and vasodilate my blood vessels to my muscles so I can run faster and get away from it. But in our world, that might be my kids just need $10,000 worth of braces, property taxes are coming due. The transmission just went out on the car, and you know, I'm gonna get laid off and pink slipped in two weeks of work, but I gotta pay for everything. So that stress response is the same stress response as any other stress response physiologically to the body. It doesn't know the difference. So it just creates stress. Right. And so as time goes on, it just gets worse and worse and worse. Now our hormones are screwed up, but gotta lose some weight. Well, how are you gonna lose weight when you're operating in such a stress? Because your brain's telling it one thing and you want to do the other thing, but your body's literally fighting itself. So we do a lot of neurological assessment and nervous system analysis to kind of get a baseline established on the integrity, the vitality of where the brain is and where it's living at at this moment in time. And then we can approach that to knock down inflammation, stress levels, and things like that, reset the body, make it happier so that it more wants to give up the weight. Does the brain kind of control and run the entire body? Boy, it depends, I guess, who you ask on, what does what. But I mean, I look at the the brain and nervous system as as a as a fiber optic computer cable network system, and you've got a central terminal with subterminals connected by fiber optic cables, and those are your nerves, and then you've got junctions and other pieces to a computer network system, and you've got ganglions and things like that, and subterminals, the same thing in your body. So that's gonna tell your endocrine system to release hormones, and the hormones tell the rest of the body to do a certain thing. So, from a nervous system, the way I look at it, you've got a nervous system that tells your body to do something that releases hormones that tells your body to do the rest of it. So it's like a there's a multiple effect mechanism type of thing, I see it as. So, yeah, and and I think a lot of people they try to fix one thing, but there's other things that need to be fixed. Say another person, you know, you know, you mentioned a rib. I mean, say you got a chronic back pain problem. You're living with chronic back pain all the time. Well, I got some shots, I do this, it comes and goes, my back thrown out again, I can't sleep at night because my back hurts, or it's just flared up and I'm gonna flare up again. That's causing stress and anxiety and inflammation, sleep deprivation. Now that's gonna drive problems with hormones and endocrine and create insulin and sensitivity, reduce testosterone levels, then you're gonna have brain fog and all kinds of other things going on. It's a downward spiral of things like that. Now put that in a first responder, you know, that's dealing with people that are dying or dealing with bad things and evil people that need to be taken care of, or a combat vet that's got to deal with stuff out there. You know, so you got all this mental stuff you got to deal with on that that's wrecking the rest of the system. Now they're trying to repair the system. And and you've got mental stuff that's literally fighting the whole thing because the mechanism that controls it isn't working properly. So what I what I really try to do is see if we can balance out the system, balance that system, reset those control systems so that whatever we're trying to do has a better fighting chance of getting fixed properly.

Dustin Haney 20:44

Kind of clearing up the pathways. I always like to tell people if your body's a pathway, and if you have any blockages, like on an old car, you know, you got a fuel line that goes to your carburetor, and if your fuel line's clogged, you're screwed. Yeah. The whole car is done, it's not gonna run.

Dr. Jones 21:00

Yeah, I had a patient, pardon me, a while back, and um I told him, we're gonna be doing basically a 57 Chevy frame off ground up restoration on you. Yeah. And and he started laughing at me, and I was like, Well, what? He's like, Well, I was born in 1957. I was like, Well, there you go, that's perfect. So, yeah. Um, but I mean that that's kind of our approach. It's not perfect, nothing I don't think is perfect. But but our approach, I try to really work on making people fixed as much as we possibly can. 100%, no, absolutely not. And you need other interventional modalities at times too. You need you need other stuff. But if you got a hundred of something and we can put 80 or 90 in this category, then let the rest of the 10 or 20 get worked on the way they need to get worked on, and let's take care of the 80 or 90 over here, which is not being done at that level. Yeah. Perspective. So we can clean that up and we may call you. I had another patient the other day. He was 68. He's talking about he can't he can't bend over, he can't do this, he can't do that, he can't play with his grandkids anymore, you know. And that's all he wanted to do. He's he wanted to get better so he can bend over and pick up and hang out with his kids and throw baseball with his kids. He couldn't do it, you know. He's like, I could do it 10 years ago, but I can't do it now. Yeah. So that's all he wanted to do. He just wanted to be better from that standpoint, you know. And it just everybody kind of has their reason for why they want to be better. But my thought process is, and again, like on my first responder side, it's like if I can clean up aches and pains, if I can clean up, help clean up some of the demons in the brain and make them easier to cope with and handle, if I can unload their stress bucket, then the rest of the world out there that I can't do anything about and all the stress that's out there, they can handle that a little bit better because they got more of a buffer zone because the rest of the stuff isn't dialing on and drowning on them as much as it was.

Dustin Haney 22:59

Right. So yeah, we try to tell people come in here, and you know, a lot of gyms go straight to a trainer. Oh, you need to get a personal trainer. What's the reason for that? Well, it's money, it's dollars. We don't chase a dollar. It's like, what are your goals? Well, I want to lose body fat. Okay, how's your metabolism work? What? I just want to lose fat. Okay, well, we need to figure out how your metabolism works real quick, and then we can start training you where you're effectively gonna start losing fat quick. If you go to a personal trainer, they're not scientists, they can't see in your body, they're gonna have to figure you out. And it's gonna take time, which you're gonna be paying this money for them to figure you out, which we can do a VO2 max, a resting metabolic test on you in an hour and give you a full report that tells you exactly all that information. Yep. That's exactly what I was just gonna say.

Dr. Jones 23:48

I mean, with your VO2 equipment, I mean you can look at respiratory quotients and look at O2 and CO2 ratios, and you can tell how much carbohydrate and lipid metabolism you got going right off the bat. And then you can tweak exercise prescription and programming to balance that off and focus on fat metabolism versus carbohydrate metabolism.

Dustin Haney 24:04

Right. And then right off the get-go. And then I want to build some lean muscle and lose some fat. You know, that's the main things we hear, and that's for longevity, I think, is a perfect desire. Maintain lean muscle, build lean muscle and lose body fat. Right. Keep my joints healthy so I can move. And what's next? I mean, so now I got my metabolism test, I got my VO2 man, I know how all of this works and what I need to do to achieve these goals. But what's the next thing that's gonna block that? To me, it's second this hormones. Yeah, and if my hormones aren't balanced out, I'm gonna have to work extremely hard and probably still not even be able to go to where I could go. If I just come and visit you, do a lab panel, and you sit me down and tell me where I'm at, where I need help, adjust my balances of everything and get me balanced out, then my body can actually do what God made it to do with the support of exercising, walking, eating better. And once you start seeing results fast like that, it helps you keep going. You know, yeah. When you're in here busting your butt for two weeks and you see no results, uh you I've been there. You get to where, why am I even wasting my time? Yeah.

Dr. Jones 25:16

Well, I mean, you know, I had another patient the other day. She was she was two months into a weight loss program, and she's like, I've lost a couple of pounds in two months, and she's like, I think I need to go up on a dose and this and that. I was like, why don't we look at these other things? It's like we have this problem potentially, this problem potentially, da da da. Let's look at those. Let's see if we need to tweak those to make your body happier so it's more receptive to want them to peel the weight off of it instead of wanting to starve it or to hold on to it, you know. That's why she's like, Yeah, I can eat broccoli and air and I'm not losing any weight. I'm like, yeah, your body's just in a mode that it's just not gonna give it up. And not enjoying eating the broccoli. Yeah, that's not fun. You know, and and you know, I mean, I'm not perfect by far stretch, but you know, I mean, this is coming from a person that's lost 120 pounds. We ballooned up to it and then he scame it off. So it's it's not it's not a 25-year-old athlete with 10% body fat all their life that's telling 50-year-olds that have gone through life and crises and you know, family problems and everything else with the stresses that they can't relate to what they need to do to make this happen. You know, it's coming from me who's been there, done that, and walked down that road. And, you know, good, bad, or indifferent, and it wasn't the best way to do it, but I did it, and I can speak from experience from that standpoint for people.

Dustin Haney 26:39

Yeah, for me, it's you know, we really want people to succeed when they come here.

Dr. Jones 26:43

Yeah.

Dustin Haney 26:43

So I try to tell them you have to change things and do things differently than you have before to get different results. Highly recommend you come in, do a DEXA to get your starting point, check your bone density, which you know, osteoporosis, you don't know it's coming until you bust a hip, and then the recovery rate on that's low, of course. But you can do things about that to correct it if you know that you have it. So get your DEXA at your starting point, get your metabolism checked, get your metabolism test done, go visit Apex One Wellness, get your hormones checked, your vitamins and everything about your body checked out, get the help from you to get that car nice and polished and tuned up and ready to go, and then you go out and run it. Then you do your exercises, you change your diet, and you see changes quick and consistent. Um such a big difference than coming in and working out and eating and busting your butt and not seeing anything. So, what would you recommend for someone that's woke up and says, you know what, I'm tired of this life today. I want to change. Ah, I'm gonna swing by fortified fitness. What would your uh recommendation to someone be, the steps they should take to hit those goals quicker?

Dr. Jones 28:00

Sure. No, I mean I think what you're saying is a good approach, you know. You you got a great facility, and and we were just looking, even even your your coffee people over there. One of the things they said, it's like everybody's so nice here, you know. I mean, that was one of the the the theme in the genre, the place they just offered that up. They were all three of them smiling and having a great time, and they literally said that. It's like everybody, yeah, I like working here, everybody's so nice and happy and stuff like that. So, first and foremost, you walk into a place with a good environment and a good energy. So I don't think you're gonna be shunned or looked at or like poo-pooed or whatever for oh, you're so overweight or you're this or that. I mean, I think it's a good culture here for them to walk into and be supported in the right way.

Dustin Haney 28:39

No, we want to build community, which is all. Yeah. A community is all. Yeah, we don't care what color, what size, what religion, what political beliefs. We want everybody in here just trying to get better.

Dr. Jones 28:49

Yeah, you want to be better, we're here to make people better and help people be better. So then, yeah, so then we we can go on the other piece of that. And you're absolutely right. Your DEXA scan stuff is fantastic, you know. I mean, we we've got a a potential fantastic opportunity to help out a bunch of firefighters with with DEXA scans and stuff like that. I mean, that's gonna be a uh d unbelievably amazing, you know. I mean, these poor guys are look so much hazmat material and cancer rates are, you know. I was talking with one of them the other day, he's like, you know, I got five retired buddies that died in like years after they retired, all from cancers, you know. And uh it's just it's rough on some of these people from that standpoint. So doing a DEXA scan and getting a priest check on that, you know, you look at your DEXA scan, you're looking at visceral versus subcutaneous fat. You're getting a good baseline off of those to start with on that. Yeah. And then yeah, we can we can look at the other side. We can do lab work and blood work on them, and then based on what the markers are, then we can cater and pivot and customize things off of that. We have IV programs that we can put IV infusions into for specific niches and things like that. We balance off the hormones and not just like, oh, here's your testosterone. We can look at, you know, hematocrit H and H levels, we can look at aromatization and make sure they're not too estrogen converted and things like that, and modify things how they need to be modified. I've got another provider, she's a she's a hormone specialist, she's fantastic. She's former 20-year military, and so she's got a great attitude for this stuff and does a fantastic job on that. Um, I've got another provider that's a Marine, and I've got a little army in me, so we've got a little bit of a weird, weird cadre from that standpoint. But people come in, they can do that. Um, they got old shoulder injuries that are throwing off chronic pain signals and causing problems neurologically. We clean those up and address that, decrease that sympathetic response from the then increased in pain signal that they're dealing with all the time, and not just trying to cover it up with drug, truly blocking it, subduing it, resetting it so that their body's healthier. That'll help balance off the hormones even more. So then they're sleeping better. Now we're getting a better sleep pattern, the brain's resetting, we've got better growth hormone release, they're waking up more refreshed the next day, their body's not in a spider-flight and cortisol inflammation state as much. So now they've got again a better opportunity to come back in here, put the workout in the right way, and get the weight off the way it needs to come off.

Dustin Haney 31:12

The true, real way, doing it, you know? Yeah, I believe in the you still have to live life. I want to go eat the cheeseburger every now and then and french fries and ice cream.

Dr. Jones 31:20

I got some IPAs waiting tonight.

Dustin Haney 31:22

So but it's it's funny because you know you start seeing results, and then you you start getting excited about it, and you want it more and more, and then all of a sudden it's Saturday night and it's time to cheat. Uh we went out one night Saturday night, and my wife's going, Where are we going? I said, Well, let's go steakhouse. Well, you eat beef and steak and chicken all week. I'm like, Yeah, but not from somewhere else. So yeah. And I end up eating a steak and a salad, and she's like, That's not cheating. Well, it was good, and I just didn't want to waste what I did this week. So you find yourself eating a little bit better naturally. Yeah. And the things that used to excite me, you know, the the really junk food I used to really crave, I have no cravings anymore for it. Yep. You know, and I think I do, and I take a bite and I'm like, it's just not like I remember it. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Dr. Jones 32:15

Well, you've changed your perspective and your persona, I think, across the board for everything like that. You know, I actually brought in a piece of equipment um called an Exomine. It does TMS therapy, which basically puts magnetic impulses into the brain to help rewire it for tension, anxiety, PTS, TBI, trauma, neurocognitive issues, focus, concentration, all that kind of stuff. And one of my one of my staff members was was concerned about some addiction stuff with uh with cigarettes and sodas and things like that. So cigarettes went down markedly, and um um the sodas turned into a copper water bottle with filtered water in it instead of sodas. Really, you know, and she's carrying it's like, see my copper water bottle, you know, and she was proud of the fact that that but you know, six, eight Dr. Peppers a day into a copper water bottle, filtered water bottle, you know. Nice, so big difference on what that's gonna do for her and make her feel better across the board for everything.

Dustin Haney 33:10

Something real quick, and we eliminate XMA all HIPAA with mine, so we're free to talk about whatever you want to talk about. Okay, part of this thing is to open myself wide up in order to try to help, you know, and I'm finding that mental health these days is a huge issue with more people than we know.

Dr. Jones 33:30

Yeah.

Dustin Haney 33:30

Um, I went through my own, you know, at one point my wife went through a stage of depression, and I kept saying, get your butt out of bed. It's a mental thing. You gotta push through it, be tough, you know, and all this stuff. And we talked about it on her her show about God's got a uh a funny way of doing things, right? So hers went away, and it was like the next day, and bam, I'm sitting at my office desk, and I just start crying. Yeah, and one of my guys walked in, he's like, What's wrong? What happened? And I'm like, I have no idea. There's nothing that happened. I'm just sad. Don't know why. And it scared the crap out of me because I didn't have control at the time of why I was sad, and I was doing this, I'm gonna push through, you know, tough guy, and that wasn't happening. And I finally went to a doc and he gave me a pill and I took it for a week, perfectly fine, went back and said, What the hell happened to me? He said, You got a chemical imbalance, you know, and this pill he gave me, I don't even know what it was. He said, It basically let your body relax long enough to reset. It should be good. And I was, but I've been through anxiety issues and all these other issues. So when I heard about your testing with that stuff, I came and did it. And I I remember telling your nurse, do you have a backup generator on this thing? Because I'm probably gonna blow your computer up. It might start smoking or something. Because I I go all the time, super fast. You know, I stress when I'm sitting there with nothing to do. I'll yes, honey, I'm coming home. Let's watch a TV show. And I sit there for five minutes, and my brain's all over the place of what am I gonna do at work tomorrow? When am I gonna start that business? When am I doing this? Who can help? You know, and then I start getting anxious and nervous. I'm like, okay, I can't do this. I gotta be producing something. You know, and people don't understand that. Hell, I don't understand it. But I did all your testing. We still haven't gone over the results, but we know there was a lot of red in those things, and yeah, I can uh absolutely use some help from that. And you know, another motor trying to learn how to slow down a little bit. I don't know how to do it. I've tried all kinds of stuff. How is Apex going to be able to take those results from all the testing you did for me on my personal stuff? How is that gonna be able to help me have a better life going forward and be able to calm down a little bit and not run so strong and powerful all the time? Sure, sure.

Dr. Jones 36:14

Yeah, so the the the couple of tests, I mean, that we look at, we look at kind of an overall functional brain health on a on a test. It's not necessarily like an EEG looking at electrical brain activity, it's just looking at the functional responses. And so we'll look at that and I'll see markers on that, and then I'll talk to the patient. It's like, well, this test is doing this and this. And I said, You have a problem with this, and you have a problem with that, and this is that, and this is that. And I've had intake in history that we take with them, but a lot of times I don't even know all this stuff because I didn't ask them these questions. But I look at the test, I'm like, you have a problem with this, and then they're like welling up and crying, and it was like, Yeah, how'd you know that? I'm like, because that's what your brain's telling me when I look at this and I see it, you know. And it's like, so I know based on what this is showing me, what's going on upstairs in it, you know? So we can look at that. We look at like the autonomic nervous system, which is a compare uh compilation of the parasympathetic and the sympathetics, and so we can look at the balance in between those. And if you're in fight or flight too much, we've got too much of that sympathetic stuff revving. It's like your foot on that gas pedal going 100 miles an hour and not getting anything done, type of thing. So we can look at that and see how much of that you've got going on. So we do all these different parameters again. Then we look at inflammatory markers, say on your blood work and stuff like that. Right. So we look at these, we get a nice little baseline on all this. It's like, okay, what we got this, this, and this. This is where we're starting at. So let's incorporate this, let's incorporate that, let's maybe run some of these peptides over there to help clean this up, you know? Let's get the body's chronic pain out of the way, let's decrease some inflammation, let's ramp up its ATP production so it can heal up and recover from old things that have been injured in there. Let's decrease inflammation so we're not getting as much oxidative damage and inflammation and stress from free radicals and stuff going on. Yeah. So we do all these things and then we work that process. And then, and then it just depends on what a person wants to do. If they want to get into some more nutrition, we can get more into that. If they don't want to do that, fine. You know, the way I've looked at it is like the more things a person wants to do, the more opportunities that we can put things together to synergistically amplify their their outcome, the better their results are gonna be. If they want to do two or three things, great, that's gonna help. If they want to do three, four, five things, they're gonna get a better outcome versus just this one. So I don't want to put too much on a plate or a table that somebody's not gonna want to do, because then it's just not gonna work. But but then they have to be realistic. Well, we can do this and this, and I don't want to do that and that. It's like, okay, well, that's gonna help, and this is gonna help, but if you did this and this and this, it's gonna help this much more. So that just depends on you know what their goals are and and how we want to accomplish them and what they want to commit to make that happen, you know. So we get different variables like that, you know. That kind of works with like the neuropathy stuff. So after that fire I was in, I became diabetic as well. Then I ended up with neuropathy at the same time. I had those problems with my eyes. So, you know, a typical approach from a neuropathy and a diabetic neuropathy perspective is is a gabapitin treatment for pain management. But it doesn't do anything really to fix anything, it's just managing pain potentially. But it's a neurological problem that it creates in a lot of people that there's side effects from a GABA penton that they don't like either. Sure. But it's not fixing anything either. So we put together, because of what I had to felt and experienced, a recovery. So the same thing, but there's about four different phases of that, and we take four different angles and approaches all at the same time and come after it from different approaches, and that gives us a synergistic amplification of force for the benefit that we're trying to accomplish. And then so we retest in about 12 weeks after that, and we see 10, 30 percent improvement and problems, and then we do it again, and so on and so forth. So my mentality was it's like when you and somebody's in a crisis, like if you came in and you had a problem, and it if it depending on how deep and how much despair the problem was, and initially you really wouldn't care what's fixing the problem as long as you felt better and you got it fixed. Right. You know, so let's let's get the metaphorical hemogene out of the way, and then we can tighten it up and clean it up a little bit more effectively. You know, if somebody's in a crisis, you gotta stop the crisis first, in my opinion, and then you can nitpick it and get it a little cleaner after that. So you know, I mean, we just we just swarm an effect sometimes, stabilize it down so that they can see some hope and some light, you know. And uh once they get that, then like, okay, do I need this, do I need this? We can fine-tune this and tweak this and modify this, you know, as opposed to like, well, let's try this for the next six months and see if that does anything. And you try it and nothing happens for six months. It's like, okay, well, that didn't work, so let's try this instead for six months. And then you're a year into something and nothing's happened, and you still have a crisis that you've just dealt with for six months and or twelve months, and it's got worse over 12 months. Right. You know, so uh sometimes from my perspective, it's like let's just get something stabilized, toned down, and then we can fine-tune it and clean it up a little bit better and then go from there.

Dustin Haney 41:23

Sure. Um let's go into your nonprofits, your your programs you set up for police and fire, military. Tell us about those things.

Dr. Jones 41:33

So so the nonprofit is wellness for warriors.us, which is kind of cool because nothing.gov wasn't available, so I got dot us. So that worked out. Sounds better, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it was fun. Yeah, um but I I set that up from our clinic standpoint. Um, we can take TRICARE and VA and things of that nature, military benefits, um, which is it's a it's very challenging, it's very difficult to do that, but we've got a program in place that we can do that with. So I've set up this program to help offset their out-of-pocket costs for things that aren't covered under that program, or if they have some copays and out-of-pockets that say on a TRICARE program that wouldn't be covered, I want to try to utilize that to cover the out-of-pocket expense so they can come in and and really get some help. I brought that TMS equipment kind of in that program too, you know. I mean, um again, I think there's a lot of this PTSD, you know, if you want to call it that. But I don't think some people want to be labeled that way, so I don't try to label it from that standpoint. Some people are fine, they want to recognize it that way. Other people, I don't think they want to call it that. But I just want to help them neurologically and cognitively feel better. So we come in and we can use that piece of equipment, and it's it's unbelievably effective to help out with that. Um, so it's a quite expensive thing that's not covered under an insurance plan. But what I'm doing with this is I'm basically absorbing into the cost in my practice so I can help these people out. So we we may have some out-of-pocket cost here, a fraction of what this thing can typically cost. So we're putting that piece in there to really try to help the situation out. Um so I can try to bring in things that are more cost effective, you know, not gonna be perfect, but I want it to be better so that they can try to get a better approach to being fixed and healthy as opposed to not, because well, this is covered, but or I go over here, and I'm not trying to badmouth the VA, but a lot of people go to the VA and they experience what they experienced there, and then you know, they may go over there and they may get a pill or something, and that's it, but they have this problem, that problem, and and it really wasn't what they felt they needed to help out with their problem. Sure. You know? So put all that together and then. I um I just kept working with things and I saw uh uh uh uh you know with my practice other patients coming in, this patient, that patient, and then from a reverse responder standpoint, I was like, well, uh these these people are now they need help too. They got their own problems and you know, it's similar problems, different animals, different approach, you know, from that standpoint, but it's they all need some help. And um, you know, they're living with rough stuff that has to be dealt with and addressed. Sometimes, you know, their moms, dads, and parents, and maybe they've got older, you know, parents that are sick and ill, maybe they've got kids with health problems, and then they go out and work eight or ten, twelve hour days, and have to deal with things and see things that a lot of people don't really have to deal with and see that are really rough to deal with sometimes. And probably can't even imagine some of the things they go through and see every day. It's it's tough, you know. So that start really wrecking a body too. And I'll bring these people in and they'll like the brain scans you were talking about. We'll do that. I had a gentleman the other day. I mean, big I mean, about the epitome of uh of a law enforcement guys you could ever expect. I mean, when you call 911, this is the guy you want to see coming to your door to help you, you know. And uh uh, you know, talking to him, he didn't he didn't overtly tell me what was going on, but as soon as I saw a scan, I could tell him what was going on. And he um he he didn't deny it, and I could see that I was hitting the nail on the head, and he was like, Yeah, let's do this. And so it was good because I'm I mean I'm from that point.

Dustin Haney 45:35

What is this? Because uh, you know, I've got to go through that myself, yeah, calm my brain down. Are you gonna hook me to something and shock the crap out of me? Or is it painful? Is it daily? How how long does it take for a for this to happen?

Dr. Jones 45:49

Yeah, yeah. So so the the the testing parameter, one's about 10 minutes long, and you just put your hands and feet and little blood pressure cups on little metal plates, and you just sit there, and that's it. And then the other test, we hook up kind of a little mini EEG to your to your head with a little hat device, and then the computer is going to ask you some questions, and you follow answers on the question, and based on the responses that the EEG is picking up, it'll give the data off of that. You know, so we're looking at those. Um, so we get a we get information off of that. And then so the TMS therapy is a little bit different animal from that standpoint. So this machine is kind of like the new fancy or high-speed machine. So a typical TMS is about five days a week at about 25 minutes a session for about six, seven weeks. So 35, 30 visits, something like that typically. Five days a week for five to six weeks. Yeah, yeah. It's effective, it's a very effective approach. What does it do? Yeah, so it's MRI technology. It's measured in Teslas, it's magnetic stimulation. So the same magnetic impulses that an MRI does to scan and watch and it'll get images of your body and things like that, it uses the same impulse technology to put a focalized magnetic impulse into your into your brain. And this one's going to be located in the left prefrontal cortex area, which is where a lot of our thoughts and actions are engaged and you know our activities live. So if we're having traumas or we're having addiction controls, or if we're having pain syndromes and stuff like that, what it's basically doing, you have peaks of anxieties and tension, and say maybe suppression or like low energy or call, say depressive issues, or whatever. So you have peaks and valleys. So what this is doing is basically it's carving those off and flatlining everything in the middle. So instead of having a thought that's provocative and you know, some sort of traumatic thought in the back that really sparks your brain off. And like you said, you're sitting there all of a sudden and your anxiety sparks off. You know, well, it's sparked off because something generated it, whether it was a thought, an action, or something, something created some sort of neurological process, and all of a sudden your brain's off to the races on you off of that, you know. So with this, it takes those high points that are like trip switches or triggers and it levels them off.

Dustin Haney 48:08

So something that makes me feel better about it. Uh talking to counselors, trying to figure it out myself. So I I like this analogy that she gave me, it makes me feel better about having anxiety. She said, Do you know stupid people can't get anxiety? And I'm like, What? She goes, Anxiety is the thought process of future. And most people's brains don't go fast enough. They're thinking about today and the past, you know, not what's going to happen a year or two, three, four from years from now.

Dr. Jones 48:42

If you're not thinking about it, you don't have any anxiety because you don't care about it.

Dustin Haney 48:45

Which I'm always thinking ahead of schedule. So, you know, no one's ever said anything about it. You know, like we say, everybody's got something else worse going on than you, nobody cares what you got going on in reality. So no one's said anything. But I always have this in my back pocket and gonna say, have you never experienced anxiety? No, I haven't. Well, you must be stupid. You know, at least I'm smart enough to have anxiety, right?

Dr. Jones 49:08

Well, I can I can definitely say um cooking down and being on fire is there's a little anxiety involved with that, that you want to eliminate that pretty quick. True. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're definitely worried about the future a little bit. You know, from that standpoint, you know, I and to this day I'll remember probably till the day I die. I was I was praying. That was the one my biggest thing was I was saying, you know, God don't let me burn to death here and let my wife find my charred burnt body in the back of the field. That was what was on my mind. So yeah, I guess I had a little anxiety about what the future might hold from that standpoint. For sure. For sure. So yeah.

Dustin Haney 49:45

Um so the question we ask all of our guests here, what advice would you give to our listeners about building a fortified life?

Dr. Jones 49:54

Fortified life. Yeah, you know, again, that I'm from my perspective, that's gonna go back to that one in 100 trillion type of thing, you know. I mean, we're not supposed to be perfect, we're never gonna be perfect, but I think we should try to be better for whatever we can try to be better for ourselves for, you know. If if yesterday you were eating a bunch of nasty junk, maybe don't eat as much nasty junk the next day, you know. If you weren't doing some exercise and working out, maybe start doing a little exercise and working out. And I tell a lot of the patients too, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day what it is. If you want to go catch butterflies with the butterfly net in the field, go freaking do it. Because my from my perspective, the most important thing is what you're gonna keep doing over and over and over. Because your brain likes it, you're gonna dump some dopamine, it's gonna be happy, it's gonna have that cathartic release, it's gonna wanna go do it again and get that feeling again. So if you hate going to the gym and it's like, oh, go work out in the gym and you want to ride a bike and you absolutely hate it, don't do it. If you want to go out and walk your dog down the road, walk your dog down the road because your brain likes it. And you're gonna go do it again and again and again. And guess what? That's where you're eating the elephant. You keep doing it over and over, and that's where you're gonna get the benefit from it. So, whatever your shtick is, if you want to go out and garden or whatever, it doesn't really at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if it's Pilates or yoga or I mean sky, it doesn't matter. Just find out what that part is and then just keep doing it because it makes you happy. Just keep moving, huh? Yeah, just keep moving. Yeah, just keep keep moving. That's what I gotta assure this is keep moving forward, you know? Yeah, it's it in the back with it's it's like it's from the Valhalla project. It's like, you know, sweating's okay, crying's okay, pain's okay, puking's okay, quitting's not okay. Just keeping it.

Dustin Haney 51:37

You got a sign in your lobby I see every time I go. And I can't remember exactly what it says, but it's something like don't look back, you're not going that way.

Dr. Jones 51:45

Yeah, you've already been there.

Dustin Haney 51:46

You've already been there, yeah. And I've thought about that a few times since going out of there, you know. So, you know, if you guys want to make a change in your life and start getting better every day, we encourage you to look up Apex One Wellness in Weatherford. Um, we also have fortified age management where they're gonna be able to get their information on that website. Yep. And um can have telehealth nationwide so they can get hormone balancing telehealth stuff through that. Yep. Um it's been great having you. I appreciate you being here.

Dr. Jones 52:18

I've appreciated it too. It was uh it was it was a lot of words to say. I don't know if that was the right things or wrong, so I didn't think they only got half of it out, right? But but it was real anyway. So thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.