You, Restored with Dr. Kelley Reis

Somewhere around month three, the word "recovered" stops fitting. The test is negative, the acute illness is over, and you're still exhausted, foggy, and crashing for days after one good day. An estimated 65 million people worldwide are living with this, and a great many were told their labs are normal and to give it time.

Dr. Kelley Reis breaks down why Long COVID isn't one disease with one cause, and takes you through the newest science: a Penn Medicine theory that links leftover viral RNA in the gut to low serotonin and a disrupted vagus nerve (and the brain fog that follows), and new research showing an immune system that stays switched on while its off-switch cells burn out. You'll also hear what the first big treatment trials have shown so far, including what failed, what may prevent Long COVID, and what's being tested now.

She also takes on the questions that usually get overstated or dismissed: what the spike protein research actually shows, what we know about spike after vaccination from the myocarditis data to Yale's post-vaccination syndrome preprint, and why people who got sick after a shot deserve the same serious workup as people who got sick after an infection.

Then the practical part: why pacing comes first, a free ten-minute stand test for autonomic dysfunction you can do at home, and the labs worth asking for beyond a basic panel.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

At six weeks postpartum, one appointment clears you, for exercise, for sex, for going back to being a regular patient. Here's what that visit doesn't check: iron, thyroid, your copper to zinc ratio, B12, vitamin D, the nutrient stores your body spent nine months redirecting to someone else.

Dr. Kelley Reis breaks down why postpartum depletion is so often missed, the copper shift that can leave new mothers feeling wired and flat at the same time, and why postpartum thyroiditis, which affects at least 4 percent of postpartum women, gets mistaken for depression far more often than it gets ruled out. She also covers what a real postpartum workup would actually include, and why "you'll bounce back once the baby sleeps" isn't a diagnosis.

If you've been told this is just what motherhood feels like, and it's been months, this episode is for you.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

Skip breakfast, push your first meal to noon, let your body "reset." It's some of the most repeated wellness advice out there, and for a lot of men, the research holds up. What almost never gets said is that a good chunk of that research was done in men, or in rodents, and when scientists look specifically at what fasting does to a female body first thing in the morning, the picture gets a lot less tidy.

Dr. Kelley Reis breaks down why the cortisol awakening response makes mornings the worst possible time to add a fasting stressor, the reproductive axis mechanism that makes women's hormones more sensitive to energy scarcity than men's, and who should think twice before structuring their eating around any kind of fast, postpartum women, perimenopausal women, women with PCOS whose HPG axis is already disrupted, and anyone with a history of disordered eating or HPA axis dysfunction.

She's also fair to the research that does support fasting in certain populations, and lays out what actually has more evidence behind it than skipping breakfast: an earlier eating window instead of a later one.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

"Take it out, and you'll feel better." That's the sentence almost everyone hears before gallbladder surgery. Here's the one that usually doesn't come with it: depending on the study, somewhere between one in five and nearly one in two people still have symptoms afterward, some new, some the exact same pain they went in to fix.

Dr. Kelley Reis breaks down why "just take it out" became the default answer, what actual gallbladder pain looks like versus what gets mistaken for it, and the mechanism almost nobody explains beforehand: how removing the gallbladder trades a timed, concentrated bile release for a continuous drip that some bodies handle fine and others don't.

She also digs into the more sophisticated research most consults skip entirely, the bile acid–microbiome connection and why "post-cholecystectomy syndrome" isn't one disease but several distinct mechanisms that all get lumped under the same label. If you're weighing a surgery date, or you've already had it removed and you're still not being taken seriously, this episode is the fuller picture nobody handed you.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

This week Dr. Kelley Reis turns the case notes on herself.

The homestead was supposed to look like the Pinterest picture. Instead it became sick horses, a garden that dries out and dies no matter what she does, and a to-do list that never has enough hours attached to it. She walks through what nobody posts: the droughts she cannot control, the exhaustion of trying to control them anyway, and the moment she had to stop treating her own stress response like an inconvenience and start treating it like clinical data.

She breaks down what actually changed her overwhelm, not more effort, but narrower focus. Sleep. Diet. Only spending stress on what she can actually change. Putting herself and her family first, even when the land and the animals are asking for more than there is to give. None of it came easily, and she is honest about the trial and error it took to get there, including the parts that did not work.

If you have ever built the version of your life that was supposed to fix everything and found it came with its own kind of overwhelm, this episode is the unfiltered version of that experience, from someone who treats her own nervous system the same way she treats a patient's.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

T-score, negative 2.6. That's the whole conversation, most of the time. A number, a diagnosis, a prescription, and a follow-up scan booked two years out.

In this episode, Dr. Kelley breaks down what actually drives bone loss that almost never gets investigated. Hormonal decline, and why normal menopause is not the same thing as normal bone loss. Nutrient status beyond a calcium supplement, including vitamin K2, magnesium, and protein, since roughly half of bone volume is collagen matrix, not mineral. Vegan and plant-based diets, and what the research actually shows about fracture risk and how to correct for it. Chronic cortisol elevation. Thyroid medication, and how being over-replaced on T3 can thin bone the same way too little estrogen does. And a close look at the calcium supplements themselves, including real research linking them to coronary artery calcification and kidney stones, and why most women are never told how much they're already getting from food before being handed another bottle.

This episode also walks through the real, underdiscussed risks of the medications used to treat osteoporosis, atypical femur fractures, osteonecrosis of the jaw, the rebound fracture risk with stopping denosumab, and the cardiovascular warning on newer bone-building drugs, alongside the research showing when the benefit still outweighs those risks.

Including a real case of a woman whose bone density stabilized for the first time since her diagnosis, without changing her prescription, once the fuller picture was finally addressed.

A scan is a measurement. It was never meant to be the whole conversation.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

Her son got diagnosed in eleven days. One appointment, a referral, a questionnaire. She had been managing the exact same thing for over twenty years, with no name for it at all.

In this episode, Dr. Kelley breaks down why ADHD gets missed in women for decades, and the hormone connection almost no specialist discusses. Estrogen has a direct, mechanistic effect on dopamine signaling in the brain regions responsible for attention and follow-through. Research shows it's the decline in estrogen, not the absolute level, that worsens symptoms, which is why a woman in perimenopause can be told her hormones are "fine" while her focus falls apart anyway. One recent survey found 43 percent of women with ADHD were diagnosed for the first time between ages 41 and 50.

She also explains the "scattered, can't land on anything" feeling through a second, separate mechanism, chronic sympathetic activation flooding the prefrontal cortex with norepinephrine and dopamine at levels that impair rather than support it, drawing on Yale researcher Amy Arnsten's work, which specifically names ADHD among the conditions this affects. ADHD itself is fixed. This layer on top of it is not, and addressing it can measurably change how symptoms feel day to day.

Including a patient story of decades of masked ADHD finally surfacing during perimenopause, and what gets missed alongside an ADHD evaluation, including thyroid dysfunction, iron deficiency, and chronic HPA axis dysregulation.

You do not need to have been the kid bouncing off the walls to have ADHD. Most women with it never were.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

IBS isn't a diagnosis of what's wrong. It's a diagnosis of exclusion, what gets written on the chart after other things have been ruled out, or more often, after they haven't even been looked for.

In this episode, Dr. Kelley Reis breaks down what's actually underneath most IBS presentations, and why chasing the "what" instead of the "why" keeps so many people stuck. SIBO, reframed as an opportunistic overgrowth that moves in because your gut's defenses are already down, not an end diagnosis to kill and move on from. Food sensitivities, and why an ever-growing avoidance list, sometimes down to five foods, is a sign the real problem was never on the food side. Dysbiosis. Post-infectious IBS following a gut infection from years earlier.

Including the story of a patient who spent six years being told to eat more fiber, which made her symptoms significantly worse, before a full stool workup finally explained why, and what changed once the terrain itself, not just the overgrowth, actually got addressed.

Irritable was never an explanation. It was where the investigation stopped.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

Have you tried yoga. 

Have you tried losing a little weight. 

Some people just have a lower pain tolerance. 

If you live with fibromyalgia, you've heard some version of every one of these sentences.

In this episode, Dr. Kelley Reis starts with something most patients don't know: there's no blood test, no imaging, and as of 2010, no physical exam for fibromyalgia. The tender point exam was retired because it missed a quarter of real cases. The current diagnosis is entirely two self-report questionnaires run through a formula, confirming a pattern exists without ever asking what's causing it.

From there, she explains central sensitization, the real physiological mechanism behind fibromyalgia pain, and walks through what almost never gets investigated. Chronic low grade infection. HPA axis dysfunction. Mitochondrial impairment. Gut permeability. The alpha-delta sleep intrusion research showing disrupted deep sleep may actively generate fibromyalgia pain, not just accompany it. The link between physical trauma, post-traumatic stress, and fibromyalgia onset, including why car accidents specifically show up so often in patient histories. And a newer, genuinely underdiscussed finding: a 2021 study showing antibodies from fibromyalgia patients can transfer the condition to healthy mice, pointing toward an autoimmune mechanism in at least a subset of cases.

Including the story of a woman who lived with fibromyalgia for nine years before anyone connected her symptoms to a mono infection, a difficult divorce, and a gut history she'd always dismissed as unrelated.

You were never making this up.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com

Four years. Four doctors. That is the average time it takes a woman to get a correct autoimmune diagnosis, according to survey data from the Autoimmune Association. Twenty three and a half million Americans live with an autoimmune condition. Two out of every three of them are women.

In this episode, Dr. Kelley Reis breaks down why that gap exists, and what a proper autoimmune workup should actually include, most of which never gets ordered. Full antibody panels instead of a single test. Gut permeability and molecular mimicry. Chronic viral infections like EBV. Heavy metal burden, nutrient status, and family history.

Including a real case of a woman with three years of migrating joint pain, hair loss, and a borderline ANA that never crossed a diagnostic threshold, whose full picture told a very different story once someone finally looked at all of it at once.

Normal labs are not the same as nothing happening.

You, Restored is hosted by Dr. Kelley Reis, Naturopathic Physician and founder of Liberty Natural Wellness — a fully virtual direct-care practice rooted in nervous system regulation, gut health, and hormones.

Learn more at libertynaturalwellness.com