A Breakthrough Prize-winning researcher in the Life Sciences field reveals a probiotic recipe that helps with memory and brain fog.

But one investigation changed everything.

My name is Dr. Joshua O’Carr, neuroscientist, researcher and winner of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences: one of the most well-funded prizes in the scientific world, created by Silicon Valley billionaires (including Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin) to recognize major advances in disease treatment and biology. I have spent years studying how certain compounds interact with the brain at the cellular level. Studies in communities known for their extraordinary longevity—including a small, remote community in Korea where cognitive decline and memory loss in old age are remarkably rare—led to an unexpected discovery.

This community possessed an ancestral fermentation method that produced a specific strain of Lactobacillus Paracasei. In studies, this probiotic demonstrated an incredible ability to combat the accumulation of these sugar crystals in neurons. Most surprisingly, the basic food used in this fermentation process is something most people already have in their refrigerators—but almost no one prepares it correctly to create this strain.

These populations, who lived the longest and best-performing lives, shared a single daily habit: a simple dish with eggs—nothing sophisticated, nothing exotic—and topped it with a homemade fermented paste made from a very specific variety of Korean cabbage, a traditional preparation that had been passed down through generations in their family, fermented under very precise conditions for exactly 3 weeks and 5 days.

When tested in the laboratory, the results surprised the research team. The active compounds in this probiotic appeared to aid the body’s own ability to process and eliminate the buildup of sugar accumulated in neurons—something the researchers described as unprecedented.