About Maria
Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. Certified GAPS Practitioner. More than fifteen years of helping people whose bodies have been asking for something no one else heard.
Hello, I’m Maria
I’m a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, trained through the Nutritional Therapy Association, and a Certified GAPS Practitioner. For more than fifteen years my clinical work has centered on the people who are hardest to help: those with complex, long-standing digestive problems, stubborn inflammation, and bodies that have been under strain for a very long time.
Much of that time has been spent working alongside physicians, as the person who helps patients turn a therapeutic plan into meals they can actually cook, eat and live with. That work taught me two things I now build everything on.
The first is that food matters enormously, but it rarely works alone. The second is that the state your nervous system is in decides how much of that food your body can use. A perfect diet eaten in a constant state of alarm is not a perfect diet.
Why the nervous system became the center of my work
Over the years I kept meeting people who had done everything right. They ate clean, took the right supplements, cut out the usual suspects. Their plans were sound on paper, and they were still bloated, still inflamed, still reacting to more foods every year and still exhausted.
What they shared was a body that never got the signal that it was safe. Stress, old trauma, grief, illness and years of pushing through had kept them in a sympathetic, fight-or-flight state, and in that state the gut is simply not the priority. Digestion slows, the gut lining is repaired less, and the immune system stays on guard.
So I began to work from the nervous system outward. We still work with food, often in great detail, but we also work with breath, rhythm, rest, and the small daily practices that tell your body it can stand down. When that happens, the nutrition finally has somewhere to land.
At a glance
- Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP)
- Certified GAPS Practitioner
- More than fifteen years in clinical practice
- Speaker on nutrition and the nervous system
- In person in Beaverton, Oregon, and by secure video
What I bring to our work together
Therapeutic diets, in real kitchens
I have deep experience with therapeutic diets, including low sulfur, low histamine, low polyamine, low FODMAP, GAPS and carefully supervised ketogenic approaches. I know where they help, where they overreach, and how to keep them nourishing, sustainable and temporary wherever possible.
Working alongside your medical care
I have spent years collaborating with physicians. I am comfortable coordinating with your doctors, therapists and other practitioners, with your permission, so that your care pulls in one direction instead of several.
The gut and nervous system as one system
My training and my clinical experience both point to the same place: the gut and the brain are in constant conversation. I help you work with both sides of that conversation at the same time.
Reading the whole person
I pay close attention to personality, pace and history, because the right plan for a busy executive and the right plan for someone recovering from a long illness are rarely the same plan.
Still running trails
I’m in my sixties, and I still run trails. I don’t say that to impress anyone; I say it because it is the clearest evidence I have that the things I teach work over the long haul. A nervous system that knows how to recover, a gut that is well nourished, and a pace that leaves room for joy will carry you a very long way.
Aging well is one of my favorite subjects to write and teach about, and it runs through much of what you’ll find on this site.
Sharing what I have learned
I love translating complex physiology into steps people can take the same day. Recent talks include:
Food as Medicine Symposium, 2021
The Low Sulfur Dietary Protocol: Rationale, Implementation, and 8 Years of Observations
A professional-track presentation for practitioners on when a low sulfur protocol may be worth considering, how to put it into practice, and what years of clinical use have shown.
Theosophical Society in Portland, 2025
Tapping into Intuition
A talk on the balance between the autonomic nervous system and the enteric nervous system of the gut, and how restoring that balance can make creativity, intuition and joy more accessible.
Let’s find out what your body is asking for
Every relationship starts with a conversation.