My grandmother in Sri Lanka drinks Gotu Kola kola kenda (porridge) every morning and has done so for over 50 years. She is 87, sharp as a tack, manages her own finances, and walks 2km to the market every day. When I visited her last year, she taught me the traditional preparation.
She picks the fresh leaves from her garden, washes them, and grinds them with a stone mortar and pestle with a small amount of water and scraped coconut. She adds this paste to a pot of rice that has been overcooked into a thick porridge. A pinch of salt. That is it. She has been eating this for breakfast since she was in her thirties.
Back home in the US, I cannot easily get fresh Gotu Kola leaves, so I have been supplementing with capsules (500mg standardized extract) while also growing Centella asiatica in a pot on my windowsill. When I have enough leaves, I make a simplified version of the kola kenda or just add fresh leaves to smoothies.
The fresh leaf preparation feels different from the capsules -- harder to compare doses, obviously, but there is something about the whole-plant preparation that seems more grounding. The traditional medicine perspective would say this is because the whole plant contains synergistic compounds that standardized extracts miss. The scientist in me suspects it is partly placebo and partly that fresh plants do contain a broader spectrum of minor constituents.
What I can say with certainty: after 5 months of daily Gotu Kola in various forms, my memory is sharper, my anxiety is lower, and my skin looks better. My grandmother would say "I told you so." She has been telling everyone for decades.
The West is just now discovering what Sri Lankan grandmothers have known for centuries.