Episode #76: 25 Years on High Alert: What Has Living Through 9/11 Done to Our Bodies?

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the toll of a quarter-century spent on high alert is written into the bodies of the people who answered the call. This week, Sara Perkins-Ricks and Therese Apel sit down with Sgt. Jordan Jones to talk about what constant high-intensity service does to those who serve, and how they recover.

Jordan is the founder and CEO of Holos, a performance optimization and wellness company built for military personnel, law enforcement, first responders, and other high-stress professionals. He brings more than two decades of military service to the conversation — more than half of it as a Special Forces Medical Sergeant — along with his experience as a Human Performance and Wellness Coordinator within Army Special Forces, where he helped design programs to strengthen resilience, recovery, and well-being for elite operators. He launched Holos to bridge the gap between tactical excellence and holistic wellness, giving professionals science-backed strategies to sustain peak performance without sacrificing long-term health.

At the center of the conversation is Operator Syndrome, which is the cumulative physical, neurological, and psychological toll carried by elite military personnel and Special Operations Forces after years of constant high-intensity service. Rather than a single standalone condition, it shows up as an interconnected web of clinical symptoms driven by years of high allostatic load. And as it turns out, it's not just in the military.

On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Jordan, Sara, and Therese look at the challenges facing not just the military, but first responders and everyone whose work lives at the intersection of high stress and high trauma, and what the last quarter-century has asked of the people who carry that weight.

Produced by Daniel Anderson at Audio Alchemy Productions.