5 Benefits of Aloe Vera

Sometimes it is the simple botanicals that can make your life easier. As summer makes its way into higher heat indexes you may want to consider aloe vera as a significant skin protectant and healer. Try several other of these 5 benefits of aloe vera too and you just might be surprised at this plant’s systemic, restorative, and accessible health attributes.

An Ancient Remedy

Aloe vera is a plant steeped in history with evidence of its use dating as far back as Mesopotamia 2200 BC. It is documented that Alexander the Great employed the use of aloe juice to heal the war wounds of his warriors and that Aristotle persuaded Alexander to capture the Island Socotra to gain possession of the precious aloe groves which offered sufficient medication to heal the wounds of his entire battalion.

In Egypt, about 6,000 years ago Cleopatra used aloe as her daily skin regiment and because of its anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties, elite dead Egyptians were embalmed in it. The Mayan indians labeled this spiky plant the “Fountain of Youth” and in the practice of Indian Ayurvedic medicine, aloe vera is one of very few botanicals that can balance the body types of pitta, kapha and vata.

Skin Soother

One of the most popular go-to remedies for skin problems is aloe vera.

Researchers at the Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand stated that,

“In a study of twenty-seven patients with partial thickness burn wound, they were treated with aloe vera gel compared with vaseline gauze. It revealed the aloe vera gel treated lesion healed faster than the vaseline gauze area. The average time of healing in the aloe gel area was 11.89 days and 18.19 days for the vaseline gauze treated wound.”

You can apply aloe vera directly from cutting the plant and squeezing it directly on the wound. Also, freeze the raw or bottled juice into ice-cube trays which are perfect for easy application on small burns, bug bites, sunburn, poison ivy and psoriasis.

Combat Sour Breath

Aloe vera has shown to reduce bad breath. Herbalist Letha Hadady, author of Healthy Beauty, cites aloe vera as containing a compound called B-sitosterol. This an anti-inflammatory which soothes acid indigestion, one major contributor to bad breath. It is recommended to drink up to 1/4 cup pure aloe vera gel dissolved in a 1/2 cup of water or apple juice once a day, however don’t overdo it as too much can act as a laxative.

Help You Go

Just found under the skin of the aloe vera leaf is a substance knows as ‘latex’. Here lies a key compound called aloin aka barbaloin which has been linked to laxative effects. This aloe vera latex has been approved by Germany’s Commission E, a regulatory agency for herbs, as a safe remedy for constipation however in America it is still being studied for approval.

Antioxidant Activity

According to research done at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain which was published in the journal Molecules, aloe vera has been shown to hold antioxidant and Antimycoplasmic properties. Medical News reports that, “Mycoplasma are a type of bacteria that lack a cell wall, they are unaffected by many common antibiotics. Antimycoplasmic substances destroy these bacteria.”

The Spain study concluded that, “A. vera extracts from leaf skin and flowers can be considered as good natural antioxidant sources.”

Wrinkle Fighter

If you want less wrinkles, aloe vera may be helpful. In a study of 45 women who topically applied aloe vera gel to their face over a 90-day period, it showed an increase in skin elasticity and collagen production.

The study was conducted by South Korean researchers and published in the Annals of Dermatology in 2009 concluding that,

“Aloe gel significantly improves wrinkles and elasticity in photo-aged human skin, with an increase in collagen production in the photo-protected skin and a decrease in the collagen-degrading MMP-1 gene expression.”

 

These 5 benefits of aloe vera show how powerful this plant can be when it comes to maintaining optimal health. Each home should at least have one aloe vera plant which is easy to care for and makes a perfect growing medicine cabinet. Simply cutting a leaf and applying it may be better than many other conventional, synthetic applications plus the plant heals itself at the cut and keeps on growing. Surely an example of the wonders of another resilient botanical fix.