What is the Meno Method? (and why I built it)

Perimenopause symptoms rarely get explained in a way that actually makes sense… mine sure didn’t, and I’d been in clinical practice for 29 years at that point. You’d think that counts for something. It didn’t, not for my own body.

So I built a framework. Four pillars, and here’s what each one actually means.

Mindfulness (but not the buzzword kind)

This is nervous system regulation, plain and simple. I trademarked a practice called MENOTATION™ specifically for the cortisol surges and dysregulation that show up during this transition, because regular meditation just doesn’t touch this stuff the same way. You can sit and breathe all day and still feel like your body’s on fire from the inside. That’s a different problem than what most meditation apps are solving for.

Exercise

This one comes straight out of my own training as an athlete, plus years working alongside exercise physiologists in the clinic. The workouts your body needs at 50 are not the workouts that worked at 30. Your hormones changed the whole equation, and long endurance sessions alone won’t get you the results you’re used to anymore. I wish someone had told me that a few years earlier.

Nutrition

Built on current research, not trends, because trends come and go and your metabolism doesn’t care about any of them. The role of protein, the gut-hormone connection, what your labs are actually telling you (not just what the reference range says is “normal”). An aging female body has different needs than what most nutrition advice online assumes, and let’s be honest, most of that advice was written for a 30-year-old metabolism and never updated.

Openness

This is the piece almost nobody talks about, and honestly it might be the most important one. The psycho/emotional weight of this change: how much is shifting in your mind, your body, your spirit, all at once, often with no one even asking how you’re doing with it. Not your doctor, not your friends, sometimes not even your partner.

Why I built this whole thing for perimenopause symptoms in the first place:

I’m a wellness realist, not a “goop” groupie. I’m the nerdy gal who prefers PubMed over poetry (I’ve read Dr. Janet Travell’s pain referral books cover to cover, five times, because I’m genuinely that obsessed with fascia). So when my own body stopped making sense, I went back into everything I’d already spent decades learning: physical therapy, acupuncture, functional nutrition, my own experience as a master’s level athlete.

I built The Meno Method on January 1, 2022, because I needed it myself. Once I started using it, women started asking me for the same thing.

Hundreds of women have gone through the program since. Each one just as frustrated by the conflicting, siloed advice the medical system hands out as I was.

I’m Bianca. Doctor of Physical Therapy. Acupuncturist. Functional nutrition practitioner. 29 years in the clinic. 53, and still figuring this out myself, right alongside you.

If you want the weekly breakdown of these four pillars, one at a time, subscribe to my Substack here.