Healthy Herbs: Aloe Vera

Aloe Vera is possibly the most popular and well known herbs in today's society. It grows as a large, cactus-like plant - in fact many people think it actually is a cactus, when in fact it's actually part of the lily family's succulent "aloes".

Most people already know that aloe vera is wonderful for pain, particularly the kind you get from burns. Whether cooking burns or sun burns, aloe is often used to take away the pain. It's known as a contact healer though, because it not only takes away the pain, it stimulates healing on the affected area as well.

Aloe can be used for sore nipples by nursing mothers, and the juice can be used as an eye drop too. Used as such, it can help improve the eye's circulation and sight.

Another little known use of aloe vera is to relieve itching from chicken pox, poison ivy, and poison oak. And drinking aloe vera juice for several days can expel pinworms too.

Aloe vera is wonderful for many kinds of skin problems too. Since it helps remove dead skin and promotes the growth of healthy living cells, it not only helps wounds and burns heal faster but it can help your skin improve in general too.

Because it has such great results for both skin and hair care, it's common to find aloe vera in many types of beauty and cosmetic products. One of the reasons aloe vera is so useful as a healing herb though, is because it can penetrate all three layers of your skin. This can create wonderful results when aloe vera is used with other all natural ingredients that won't harm your body.

Unfortunately aloe vera is often mixed with harmful chemicals, colorings and additives that can be harmful to your body. And since the aloe vera penetrates your skin so well, it helps carry those toxins deeper into your body as well.

This is one of the reasons aloe vera suntan lotions tend to sting. These popular products often contain alcohol and perfumes added to the aloe vera, so when you apply them to a sunburn, the pain isn't often taken away as you'd expect. Instead it stings or hurts when it goes on, then it doesn't really feel any better later. It also doesn't seem to heal as fast as you'd expect it to.

Using pure, 100% aloe vera juice or gel however, almost always relieves the pain as soon as you put it on, and the healing happens much faster too.

So be sure to read product labels, and understand what you might be putting into your body when buying aloe vera products. My recommendation would be to stick with 100% natural and pure if at all possible.

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