About

The Beginning

I was only 13 when my closest cousin — my best friend - was diagnosed with a rare muscle cancer.

She was just 15. By 17, she was gone.

Her name was Fotula. Everyone else called her Foots, but I never did. I called her Foo.

Ironically, the tumor began in her foot — her literal nickname. My mom noticed the swelling one day when we were visiting their house. Looking back, I can't help but feel that never calling her "Foots" but "Foo" instead was a kind of quiet magic — a small, sacred defiance against what was to come.

I was there on the day that was supposed to be her last chemotherapy treatment — but instead, the doctors had come in that morning when she was alone and told her there was nothing more they could do. She would die. They didn't even wait until her mother was present. She cried with my mom, and I just sat there in silence. I later learned she asked my mom, "Why didn't Angela say anything to me when I told her I'm dying?" I carried that guilt for years. I was only 15, and l've since forgiven myself for being a child in the face of something so unimaginable.

After returning from Lourdes, France (her Make-A-Wish trip), she packed her hospital bag for what would become her final stay. Her grace in accepting her death was awe-inspiring. "Ang," she said, "you can have all my clothes." | replied, "Oh, don't say that." I didn't yet have the faith maturity she did. I still have some of her clothes — she had amazing, stylish taste.

People often say she didn't get her miracle. But she did. I watched her face death with a strength and peace far beyond her 17 years.

She died two weeks later. I was by her side when she took her last breath. My 11-year-old sister held her hand, and my mom gently told her, "It's okay to go. Don't worry about us." I watched my aunt — her mother — collapse in the hospital hallway.

Our family has never been the same. Some of the changes have been beautiful. Some marked by trauma, still unhealed.

Grief & Awakening

At that age, grief doesn't come with a roadmap.

But something else awakened in me — something soul-deep and unshakable. A quiet knowing that I was meant to understand health - true, root-cause health - and to never stop asking:

• What is health?
• How do we achieve it?
• What causes disease?
• And how do we truly prevent it?

This was before high-speed internet and social media.

So I became the teenager haunting used bookstores, digging through dusty library shelves, and waiting through dial-up modem tones just to search obscure medical forums.

I quickly realized that food is the foundation of health. That became clear.

What also became clear — and shocking — was how different the truth I uncovered in medical journals was from the advice being given in mainstream medicine.

Why were people saying food had nothing to do with schizophrenia, when I found studies from the 1970s in peer-reviewed journals showing most schizophrenics had flattened intestinal villi (celiac) and couldn't absorb nutrients?

Why were they adding synthetic folic acid to our food supply when it isn't found in nature — and most of us can't even convert it into its usable form?

And cholesterol and heart disease? Why were they lying?

At 17, I would walk to the local health food store with my grocery store cashier paycheck and buy methylated B-complex and enema bags. I was already experimenting on myself. I tried veganism, vegetarianism (though l'd sneak my mom's meatballs on Sunday), blood type diet, paleo, AlP, keto, juicing, wheatgrass, fasting, endless supplements, and functional therapies.

My friends and family watched — maybe wondering when the obsession would pass.

It didn't.

The Pattern Repeats

And then, the pattern repeated.

Like a knock... knock... knock.

That same year — just two years after losing Foo — my best friend in high school was diagnosed with leukemia. Another best friend's boyfriend (now her husband) was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Two more classmates, Candace and Jeff, were diagnosed with lymphomas.

Yes. All from the same school. All within a short window of time.

Eventually, the school was torn down and relocated. I still wonder what was buried under that land.

But I know this for sure: the universe wasn't letting me forget.

It kept whispering - and sometimes screaming -

"Don't look away."

And I never have.

Academic Years & The Red Pill

I knew intuitively I needed to get my Nutritional Science degree - even though I literally rolled my eyes through the entire Four Food Groups curriculum. I quickly discovered it was funded by all the usual suspects: Nestlé, government public health agencies, and agri-pharma donors.

The biggest red pill moment came when I tried to organize a symposium on GMOs (this was 1999).

The director of my nutrition program pulled me aside and said:

"Angela, we can't do that - Nestlé funds this program and doesn't want us talking about GMOs."

That was when I realized: this wasn't science. This was propaganda — a degree program bought and paid for.

Still, I knew people would only listen to me if I had the credentials.

So I completed the degree.

I then entered a Bachelor of Education program because I planned to teach nutrition in schools.

But my favorite education experience came next: a

Holistic Nutrition diploma.

Two full years of non-sponsored, root-cause learning.

A room full of seekers asking real questions.

It was functional medicine before the term existed

— and I loved every minute.

Healing, Mothering & The Real Work

The next 20 years were a whirlwind:

• Working in public education
• Launching my private nutrition practice
• Collaborating with integrative MDs in fertility and chronic illness
• Homeschooling all four of my children — because by then, I knew too much to send them to government institutions

I stayed knee-deep in professional development — devouring books, combing through PubMed, attending every functional medicine conference I could find.

And I was always experimenting — healing leaky gut, candida, and infertility through nutritional and metabolic therapies.

The Birth of @slingin_mama

Then came @slingin_mama - born in the chaos of early motherhood.

At first, I just needed a place to store photos. I had never used social media and figured it'd be a digital scrapbook.

But it quickly became something else.

It evolved into a space for nature schooling, nutrition storytelling, and calling out the lies we've been told about our bodies.

To my surprise, people resonated. They messaged.

They asked for more.

And I realized: it was time to stop hiding.

The Metabolic Therapy Method™

I opened an online practice.

Thousands began healing.

Things doctors said were impossible began happening:

• Thyroid antibodies dropped
• Panic attacks vanished
• Fertility restored after 10 years
• Tumors shrank
• Chronic fatigue lifted
• Hallucinations disappeared
• Non-verbal children began speaking
• Chronic UTIs disappeared
• Joy and vibrancy returned where hopelessness had lived

And out of that came something powerful:

The Metabolic Therapy Method™.

A method rooted in 40 years of research, trial, observation, and truth-seeking.

It's about restoring mitochondrial health - the foundation of human thriving.

But it's not just a protocol.

It's a philosophy. A rebellion. A return to what's real.

And if you're here, you're meant to be.

I welcome our collaboration on your healing journey, 

Angela Di Serio