ENTER THE SACRED BACKYARD
SACRED SOUL FAMILY
Dodee Schmitt
Dodee is a Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, Autonomic Response Testing Practitioner, and Biofield Science Educator with nearly two decades of experience in chronic illness recovery and integrative wellness. Dodhisattva.com, est. 2009
Table of Contents
If you have noticed your memory is not what it used to be, you are far from alone.
Brain fog, misplaced words, forgetting why you walked into a room, these complaints have become almost universal in recent years.
There is a real reason for this, and there is also a real reason for hope.
The hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for forming new memories and supporting new learning.
It is also, encouragingly, dynamic tissue.
Unlike many parts of the brain, the hippocampus has the capacity to regenerate and rebuild, but that recovery takes focused, sustained effort.
This article walks through what the research actually shows about protecting and rebuilding this part of the brain, along with the supplements and habits worth considering.
Recap callout boxes summarizing key concepts, who is affected, and recovery potential for hippocampus and memory loss
Key concept
- Neurodegeneration means nerves are dying off, showing up as accelerated brain aging
- The hippocampus shows significant degeneration of neuronal cells in affected patients, leading to noticeable memory loss
Who's affected
- Middle-aged adults appear to be impacted more than older adults
Recovery potential
- The hippocampus is dynamic tissue with the capacity to regenerate
- Recovery is slow and requires focused, sustained effort
- The underlying driver needs to be addressed and quieted for rebuilding to take hold
COVID-19 and the Hippocampus: A Piece We Cannot Ignore
One of the most significant, and most under-discussed, contributors to the memory struggles so many people are experiencing right now is COVID-19 itself.
This is not a fringe claim. It is documented in peer-reviewed research from Yale Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, and multiple independent studies published in journals including Nature and Scientific Reports.
Research shows that COVID-19 can cause structural and functional damage to the hippocampus, the brain region critical for memory and learning.
This damage is largely driven by severe neuroinflammation, a systemic cytokine storm, and reduced neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells, rather than the virus directly infecting brain tissue.
Neuroimaging studies have observed microstructural alterations, reduced connectivity, and actual reductions in grey matter volume in the hippocampus of COVID-19 patients.
What is especially important for readers to understand is that this is not limited to severe cases or older adults.
Brain changes, including reduced connectivity and altered spatial working memory, have been documented even in young adults who experienced only mild infections.
A multimodal study of Italian adolescents and young adults found reduced volume specifically in the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus associated with COVID-19 positivity, in a population whose brains are still in key years of growth and development.
The mechanism researchers point to involves the virus triggering activation of immune cells in the brain called microglia, which disrupts the environment required for the growth of new hippocampal neurons.
One study published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience found that reduced neurogenesis in COVID-19 patients appears driven by this microglial activation and the resulting inflammatory cytokines, ultimately impairing spatial memory and learning.
As a result, the researchers concluded, memory loss in long COVID patients can be directly attributed to reduced hippocampal neurogenesis.
Researchers also note that this hippocampal damage may act as a predisposing factor for accelerated neurodegenerative conditions.
For most people these cognitive deficits are not permanent and tend to improve over six to nine months, or up to a year post infection, but for many the impact lingers far longer, and is compounded by ongoing screen time, poor sleep, and chronic stress, the very factors covered throughout the rest of this article.
This is precisely why a hippocampus rebuilding protocol matters so much right now, for an entire generation of people, including the young and previously healthy, who are dealing with a level of memory disruption that did not exist at this scale before 2020.
Methylation & Memory
One of the most foundational, and most overlooked, pieces of brain recovery is methylation.
This is the biochemical process your body uses to repair DNA, produce neurotransmitters, and regulate inflammation, and it relies heavily on methyl B vitamins along with compounds like TMG (trimethylglycine) and DMG (dimethylglycine).
When methylation isn’t running smoothly, the result is often felt directly as brain fog and fatigue.
Elevated homocysteine, a marker of impaired methylation, is itself a known risk factor for hippocampal atrophy and cognitive decline.
This is particularly relevant for anyone recovering from COVID-related inflammation, since restoring methylation capacity supports the body’s ability to synthesize myelin, produce neurotransmitters, and regulate the immune response, the very processes disrupted by the neuroinflammation discussed above.
The body normally uses methylation to keep latent retroviruses, like EBV and herpes, silenced and inactive.
Without adequate methylation, that silencing mechanism breaks down.
This means EBV and herpes can reactivate.
In these cases, COVID appears to be the underlying driver of the reactivation.
Address the COVID-related disruption first, then work on EBV and herpes or lyme.
Supporting this pathway with methylated B vitamins, along with TMG or DMG, is one of the most foundational steps in giving the hippocampus what it needs to actually rebuild.
Callout box explaining methylation and histonation as a key concept for brain recovery
The key: methylation and histonation
- Methylation is the process your body uses to repair DNA, produce neurotransmitters, and regulate inflammation
- Support it with methylated B vitamins, TMG (trimethylglycine), and DMG (dimethylglycine)
- Elevated homocysteine, a sign of impaired methylation, is linked to hippocampal atrophy and cognitive decline
- Restoring methylation supports myelin production, neurotransmitter synthesis, and immune regulation, all part of how the brain recovers from inflammation
Why Screen Time Is Working Against You
Not all screen time is created equal.
Research distinguishes between active screen use, things like problem solving, coding, or engaging tasks, and passive screen use, like scrolling and binge watching.
Passive screen time is associated with poor verbal memory and global cognitive decline.
One study found that watching television more than a few hours a day was associated with a higher risk of dementia, along with measurable reductions in gray matter volume and hippocampal volume specifically.
At high levels of daily screen exposure, measurable attention and working memory deficits show up within weeks.
Part of the damage happens indirectly too: screen use late in the day disrupts the sleep your hippocampus depends on to file memories away properly.
Meditation: Growing the Hippocampus Back
This is one of my favorite methods for healing the hippocampus, and it is free to all.
This is where the research turns genuinely hopeful.
Eight weeks of daily mindfulness meditation practice has been shown to increase gray matter density in both the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus.
A controlled study using just thirteen minutes of guided daily meditation found measurable improvements in attention, working memory, and recognition memory after eight weeks, though not yet at four weeks.
Recent deep brain recordings have even captured meditation directly changing activity within the hippocampus itself.
The consistent finding across the research is that somewhere around fifteen minutes a day, sustained for roughly two months, is where real structural change begins to show up.
This is not an enormous time commitment. It is, however, a real commitment to consistency.
You can check out some of my guided meditations on Insight Timer, or, if you’d like to support my work, purchase them here.
Reading Physical Books
Reading deserves a place alongside meditation in any memory rebuilding protocol.
A study at the Beckman Institute found that adults who read books for pleasure over eight weeks showed significant improvements in both working memory and episodic memory, compared to a control group doing puzzles instead.
The hippocampus is now understood to be essential to reading itself, not just to memory in general. It plays an active role in word decoding, sentence processing, and full text comprehension. Reading practice appears to contribute directly to hippocampal development and protection over time.
One detail worth knowing: reading on physical paper appears to help the brain absorb and connect details more easily than reading the same material on a screen or tablet, since paper provides stable spatial and tactile cues that lower the brain’s workload during recall.
If you are working to rebuild memory, a physical book may serve you better than the digital version.
Sleep: Where Memory Is Actually Filed Away
The hippocampus is instrumental in consolidating short term memory into long term memory, and this consolidation work largely happens while you sleep. Hippocampal activity during non REM sleep, along with theta rhythms during REM sleep, are both considered critical for properly consolidating what you learned during the day.
Aim for seven to nine hours nightly. If you are doing everything else right but shortchanging sleep, you are undermining the very process responsible for locking in the benefits.
Movement and Grip Strength
Aerobic exercise helps protect the hippocampus and enhances short term memory, and even gentle nature walks offer measurable benefit.
Interestingly, timing appears to matter: one study found that exercising about four hours after learning something new led to more hippocampal activity and better recall forty eight hours later, more so than exercising immediately afterward.
Grip strength deserves specific mention here as well.
Research has found that for every one kilogram increase in grip strength, there is an associated two percent decrease in incident dementia risk.
For reference, grip strength between sixteen and twenty kilograms is considered intermediate for women, with anything below sixteen kilograms considered weak.
For men, average grip strength runs between twenty six and thirty two kilograms, with anything below that range considered weak.
A simple daily habit with a hand gripper or dynamometer, just a few focused minutes, is a small and genuinely evidence-backed addition to a memory rebuilding routine.
Aluminum and Memory: An Often Overlooked Piece
Aluminum exposure deserves a place in any serious conversation about memory loss.
This is not a fringe concern. A cohort study of nearly 4,000 older adults in southwest France found that aluminum levels in drinking water above just 0.1 mg per day were associated with a doubling of dementia risk, and a three fold increase in Alzheimer’s risk specifically.
Aluminum readily crosses the blood brain barrier, and once inside, it preferentially accumulates in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, the very regions responsible for memory and learning.
A systematic review found aluminum exposure specifically impairs memory, processing speed, and working memory, the same cognitive domains this entire article is focused on protecting.
Given how common aluminum exposure is in cookware, antiperspirants, packaged foods, and in our environment now at alarming levels, reducing the body’s burden is worth taking seriously.
In my own practice and protocol, I include cilantro as part of supporting the body’s ability to clear aluminum, generally paired with chlorella rather than used on its own.
The research on cilantro as a chelator is still developing and somewhat mixed; animal studies have shown reduced aluminum levels with cilantro use, though this has not been fully replicated in human trials.
Some practitioners have observed that cilantro used alone may actually redistribute metals rather than clear them from the body, which is part of why pairing it with a binder like chlorella is the more common approach.
I also use an ionic foot bath as part of my own personal aluminum support protocol, though I want to be transparent that this is based on my own clinical use rather than controlled research.
Here is my full article on how to detox aluminum.
As always, if heavy metal burden is a significant concern for you, working with a practitioner who can test and monitor your levels directly is the most reliable path forward.
Supplements With Real Research Behind Them
Magnesium L-Threonate (often sold as Magtein)
Most magnesium supplements have limited ability to cross the blood brain barrier, which limits their cognitive benefit no matter the dose.
Magnesium L-threonate was specifically developed to solve this problem, raising magnesium levels in the brain and neurons directly.
In a randomized, placebo controlled trial, six weeks of supplementation improved overall cognition, cognitive age, working memory, and reaction time.
In a separate twelve week trial on older adults with mild cognitive impairment, supplementation produced an improvement equivalent to roughly a nine year reversal in cognitive age, a striking finding for a single nutrient intervention.
You can get a high-quality Magtein here, or for a discount, head to my dispensary and get all of these supplements here.
Phosphatidylserine
This phospholipid is a structural component of brain cell membranes and supports cell to cell communication along with acetylcholine and dopamine release.
A 2024 randomized controlled trial combining phosphatidylserine, alpha linolenic acid, and ginkgo flavonoids found improved short term memory and arithmetic performance over twelve months in older adults with mild cognitive impairment.
Lion’s Mane
This medicinal mushroom contains compounds believed to stimulate nerve growth factor production, supporting the survival and function of neurons in memory related brain regions.
A controlled trial using three grams of lion’s mane powder daily found a seven to ten percent improvement in cognitive impairment scores after sixteen weeks, though benefits faded once supplementation stopped, underscoring the importance of consistency.
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Lion's mane tea recipe for cognitive support, with ingredients, steps, and supply links
Lion's mane brain tea
A simple daily cup to support memory and focus
Makes 1 serving · richer with your favorite tea base
Ingredients
1-3 tsp
Lion's mane mushroom powder or dried pieces
1 cup
Filtered water, or your favorite herbal tea as a base
Optional
Splash of warm raw milk or nut milk
Optional
Raw honey or cinnamon to taste
Make it richer: Feel free to start with a base of your favorite tea instead of plain water. Both gynostemma and tulsi are wonderful, naturally caffeine-free choices. Tulsi is well known for helping lower cortisol, and elevated cortisol over time can be hard on the brain. Gynostemma is a true adaptogen, shown in research to support memory and reduce fatigue with consistent daily use, while bringing its own gentle antioxidant boost to protect brain cells.
How to make it
- 1Bring 1 cup of filtered water, or your favorite caffeine-free herbal tea, to a gentle boil in a small pot.
- 2Add 1 to 3 teaspoons of lion's mane and reduce to a simmer. Let it gently simmer for 15 to 20 minutes to draw out the beneficial compounds. If using powder, you can simply whisk it into hot liquid just off the boil for a quicker cup.
- 3Strain into your favorite mug if you simmered dried pieces or loose leaves.
- 4Stir in a splash of warm milk if desired, along with raw honey or a dash of cinnamon to taste.
- 5Sip slowly and mindfully, ideally during your daily meditation or reading time to let the ritual reinforce the habit.
Tip: Lion's mane has a naturally mild, slightly savory flavor. Starting with a gynostemma or tulsi base instead of plain water, plus a little cinnamon or honey, makes this a cup you genuinely look forward to each day.
Why consistency matters
Research on lion's mane shows the cognitive benefits build over weeks of steady use, with effects fading once supplementation stops. Make this a daily ritual rather than an occasional cup for the best chance at real, lasting support.
Personal Thoughts On Covid and The Hippocampus
Addressing COVID, even though we are in a post covid world, is paramount to any issue going on in the body.Â
It is still with each one of us today and can cause the reactivation of other latent viruses.Â
To silence it you have to create a cocktail of different herbs with the use of DMSO in order to get it to the brain.
If you are looking for support feel free to set up a coaching call with me to discuss it further.
The brain can’t receive properly when the recording mechanism itself is damaged. Over time, memory develops more and more gaps, holes in the transmitter, the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is what connects you to the higher parts of yourself.
You are the living end product of your family tree, the trauma carried forward and the wisdom gained. You are a culmination of that lineage, a living field shaped by everything that came before you.
It is paramount that you take care of your brain.
Bringing It Together
None of these pieces work in isolation, and none of them work overnight.
The hippocampus can rebuild, but it asks for steady, layered effort: less passive scrolling, daily meditation, real books in your hands, real sleep, real movement, reduced aluminum exposure, and nutrients that can actually reach the brain tissue that needs them.
I also feel that writing – actually hand writing in a journal is very helpful to memory.Â
Give it the two months the research consistently points to, and stay consistent. This is tissue that wants to recover. It simply needs the right conditions to do so.
If COVID-19 is part of your own story here, and for so many of us it is, know that the same dynamic, regenerative capacity of the hippocampus applies to that injury too.
It takes time, and it takes the same consistent, layered effort outlined above.
But this tissue wants to recover, and you can give it the conditions to do so.
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