Gotu Kola Spent Centuries as a Memory Tonic Before Anyone Checked the Receipts

The Oasis Health Journal · Submitted July 13, 2026 · 2:20 PM ET

Gotu kola has been a memory herb for a very long time. Ayurveda handed it to students. Traditional Chinese medicine filed it under longevity. It collected a pile of nicknames along the way (Asiatic pennywort, Indian pennywort, mandookaparni), which is what happens when a plant sticks around a few thousand years and everybody wants naming rights.

The reputation showed up early. The receipts took their time.

The plant itself is a low creeping thing that grows in wet ground across Asia. It is not glamorous. It looks like something you would weed out of a garden path, which people did for centuries before deciding it was medicine. The parts that interest scientists are a family of compounds called triterpenes (asiaticoside, madecassoside, and asiatic acid, mostly) plus some caffeoylquinic acids. Asiatic acid can cross the blood-brain barrier in lab studies, which is the kind of detail that makes a neuroscientist lean forward.

Then you check the human data, and the leaning-forward slows down.

In 2017, researchers pooled eleven randomized controlled trials of Centella asiatica and went looking for a cognitive effect. They did not find one. Across the pooled trials, gotu kola did not beat placebo on any measured cognitive function. That is the honest headline, and burying it would make this a brochure instead of a journal entry.

The smaller trials underneath that meta-analysis are more interesting, if you like nuance. A 2008 study in healthy older volunteers found that a high dose nudged working memory and mood in a good direction. A 2016 trial in people recovering from stroke compared gotu kola to folic acid and found it did not improve overall cognition, but delayed recall (the remember-this-list-in-twenty-minutes kind of memory) did improve. One box checked, most boxes not. That is roughly where gotu kola lives right now: a plant with a couple of promising blips and a lot of flat lines.

Here is why it is back in the lab instead of the folklore bin. Early-phase trials have started asking not just whether it works but what it actually does inside a person. One Phase 1 study reported that a standardized extract raised blood choline, the raw material your brain uses to build acetylcholine, a chemical that memory runs on. Another Phase 1 trial, in older adults with mild dementia, found the extract switched up NRF2, a master gene that turns on the body's antioxidant and anti-inflammatory cleanup crew. These are not cure headlines. They are the biological equivalent of confirming the engine turns over before anybody talks about the road trip.

The road trip is being planned. At Oregon Health and Science University, a team running an NIH-funded botanical research center is testing gotu kola in 48 adults aged 60 to 85 who have mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's. Six weeks, extract versus placebo, nobody knowing which is which, with brain scans (a spectroscopy technique that reads neuron health and mitochondrial activity) plus blood and urine markers to see if anything moves. If it does, a bigger efficacy trial follows. This is gotu kola finally sitting for the exam it has been skipping for a couple thousand years.

Most of the flattering evidence, it should be said, is still in mice. In aged mice and Alzheimer's-model mice, the extract improved memory, packed more connections into the hippocampus, and cut oxidative stress. Mice are not tiny people. The entire point of the human trials is to find out how much of the mouse story survives the trip across species.

A few honest cautions, because this is education and not a pep rally. Gotu kola is generally well tolerated, with the usual mild suspects (an upset stomach, a headache, some drowsiness). But there are a handful of reported cases of liver trouble tied to it, so if your liver is already having a hard week, this is not your herb. It may also tangle with anti-seizure medications. And because it is a plant sold as a supplement, potency and quality wander all over the map depending on who grew it and how they pulled the extract.

That last part is the whole reason we do things the slow way. We source professional-grade gotu kola fresh per order instead of letting it age on a shelf, which means our shipping is not the fastest but the potency actually shows up when the bottle does. If you are building a memory shelf, gotu kola keeps decent company with bacopa, another herb Ayurveda leaned on, plus the better-studied ginkgo and the membrane-building nutrient citicoline. None of them are magic. All of them are better fresh.

Gotu kola spent centuries being trusted and only recently started being tested. The tests are still running. The trust, for now, is a few steps ahead of the evidence, and the grown-up move is to let the receipts catch up.

This article is for education only and is not medical advice; talk with a qualified clinician before starting any supplement, especially if you take medication or have a liver condition.

Sources

1. Cognitive Vitality, Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation: Centella Asiatica (Gotu Kola) rating, updated April 2026
2. Puttarak et al., Effects of Centella asiatica on cognitive function and mood: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Scientific Reports (2017)
3. Wattanathorn et al., Positive modulation of cognition and mood in the healthy elderly following Centella asiatica, Journal of Ethnopharmacology (2008)
4. Farhana et al., Gotu Kola Extract versus Folic Acid in vascular cognitive impairment after stroke, Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2016)
5. Wright et al., Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of a standardized Centella asiatica product in cognitively impaired older adults: a Phase 1 trial, Antioxidants (2022)
6. Oregon Health and Science University: Safety and Target Engagement of Centella asiatica in Cognitive Impairment (ongoing Phase 1 trial)
7. Bioanalytical method validation and a Phase 1 pharmacokinetic trial of a standardized Centella asiatica water extract in healthy older adults, Frontiers in Pharmacology (2023)