Does Aloe Vera really work?

Just as there are millions of people who drink Aloe Vera and claim it is a very effective natural remedy, there are also large numbers who have tried it and seen absolutely no effect at all.

You might also want to see why current medical research has produced conflicting results on the effectiveness of Aloe Vera.

Here are some of the many reasons why you can try it, and it can fail to do anything:

• Not all Aloe Vera works. There are more than 300 types of 'Aloe Vera' but the one used with success is Aloe Barbadensis Miller but with little regulation in the trade some companies use other varieties simply to cash in on the Aloe Vera name.
• Aloe Vera takes a long time to grow, typically 4-5 years before the outer leaves are mature enough to contain a gel that is actually effective. To cut costs some companies harvest immature leaves whose gel has limited benefits.
• Aloe Vera is a natural product and ideally this is the best way to get it. If you can't then use only juices that have had the minimum amount of processing. Full details on this are on the page Good Quality Aloe Vera.
• Aloe Vera is not a drug. Drugs are created to have an immediate chemical reation in the body. We take a pain killer and expect the pain to be gone within an hour. Aloe Vera does not work in the same way and its effects can be gradual - taking days, weeks or months to work. See How does Aloe Vera work for a full explanation.

Why Aloe Vera can work for one person and not another

Here is a really common set of events:

• Jane has painful arthritis in her knee.
• Jane buys an Aloe Vera drink and takes 50 ml twice a day
• Ten days later Jane's pain is much reduced
• Jane tells Emma, who also has arthritis in her knee, about her experience.
• Emme buys an Aloe Vera drink and takes 50 ml twice a day.
• After two months Emma feels no difference and stops drinking Aloe Vera

The net result is that if you met Jane on Monday she would rave about how Aloe Vera has 'cured' her arthritic knee and if you met Emma on Tuesday she would tell you how Aloe Vera is a waste of money when it comes to arthritis.

How does this happen? Well there are a number of factors that need to be considered:

• We need to know if Jane and Emma purchased the same Aloe Vera drink. As you can see on our page Good Quality Aloe Vera there are hundreds of brands out there and many contain only the barest traces of Aloe, regardless of what their labels say.
• We need to know if Jane and Emma were in similar states of health. Someone suffering other ailments such as digestive issues may need to drink Aloe Vera for much longer than someone who is in a generally good state of health as the amount of nutrients the body can absorb from the Aloe will be different.

This is also exactly the same problem that leads to conflicting results in current medical research.