Aloe vera plant produces miraculous, life-saving results in trauma, burns and hemorrhagic shock

Saturday, July 31, 2004 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: aloe vera, sunburn, sunburns

The miracles derived from the aloe vera plant never cease to amaze me. This is truly a life-saving plant. It is one of the most astounding gifts of nature, and it belongs in the first aid kit and medicine cabinet of every home in America. Now, medical researchers have discovered that a compound produced by the aloe vera plant can be administered to patients who are experiencing severe trauma and blood loss. Once administered, this compound literally enhances the diffusion of oxygen molecules in the red blood cells in order to support the tissues of the body, allowing the patient to live on less blood. This effect, of course, is promising to save the lives of a great number of people who undergo traumatic injuries, including soldiers in the military who are wounded on the battlefield. It's rather astounding -- by simply extracting this so-called drag reducing polymer, or DRP, from the aloe vera plant and then administering it to patients, you can save their lives. In the military, medics could carry very small quantities of this aloe vera compound and administer it to soldiers who are suffering from extreme blood loss, thereby saving their lives.

How many lives could be saved? In laboratory tests on rats, the survival rate went up from 50% to 80% for those rats who were experiencing severe blood loss. This is a huge increase in the potential survival rate of human beings if they respond to this aloe vera compound in a similar way. It is very exciting news for medical technology, and also for natural health and those who are supporting the use of healing substances from nature in order to enhance modern medicine. This ingredient comes from the slick gel substance inside the aloe vera plant. This is a mucilage that is rich in polysaccharides and has specific visco-elastic properties. In a sense, it makes your blood cells flow more smoothly (without so much friction).

This is just the latest research to show the miraculous nature of the aloe vera plant, and as I write this, I’m looking at a number of aloe vera plants that I have growing, and I'm just standing here in awe at the gifts that nature has provided in this humble little plant. Inside each leaf is a universe of miracles available to human beings if we would only have the patience and willingness to explore. In this case, I applaud these medical researchers for looking at nature for answers rather trying to concoct some pharmaceutical to overcome nature.

The aloe vera plant, of course, has many other well-known healing properties, and it's one of the reasons that I actually eat aloe vera on a regular basis. Every single day I actually consume some of the gel from raw aloe vera leaves. Sometimes I harvest them myself (that's why I grow the plants, by the way). I go out to my yard, cut off one of the aloe vera leaves, then slice off the outer skin of the leaf. I take the gel and put it in a blender, then blend it with whey protein, soy milk and stevia (and of course my favorite superfoods powders) in order to create a healthy breakfast. And this is one of the reasons I believe that my blood chemistry is practically off the charts in terms of human health. It's one of my little secrets for outstanding cardiovascular health. The physicians who have looked at my blood chemistry profile have been absolutely stunned to see the numbers, and I believe my daily consumption of aloe vera gel is part of the reason these numbers are so astonishing.

When you consume aloe vera, you're helping your system in so many ways. I think it is offers very strong support to the digestive system. It soothes the digestive tract, and I wouldn't be surprised if someday it is discovered that aloe vera prevents and reverses colon cancer and other cancers of the digestive tract. Aloe vera is also used externally, of course, and here is where most people are familiar with the plant. They smear it on their skin to treat sunburns. This has been one of the more traditional uses of the plant over the last several thousands years by indigenous cultures, including the American Indians, Central Americans, South Americans, and civilizations like the Incas and Mayans. Aloe vera is, in fact, extremely useful for treating not only sunburns, but burns of any kind. In fact, if there's someone in your house who's suffered a severe burn, if you can grab an aloe vera leaf and squeeze the gel onto the burn and smear it around, that burn will typically reduce its severity by one or more degrees. In other words, if it was a 3rd degree burn, it will become a 2nd degree burn, and if it was 2nd degree burn, it will become a 1st degree burn. You can literally save someone's skin, or even potentially save their life if you have enough aloe vera around (and if they are burned over a large enough portion of their body).

In fact, I think it is absolutely crazy that ambulances and hospitals and emergency rooms don't have aloe vera plants standing around ready to slap onto patients when they need this. This is one of the most powerful healing substances available from nature in terms of first aid treatment. It is extremely low cost, it is well proven over thousands of years of use, and it is simply good medicine. It's more powerful in terms of stopping burns and healing wounds than anything else known to modern medicine, despite all our technology. This one simple, humble little plant does more than all the medical researchers combined in terms of providing effective first aid for burns.

There are other things you can do with aloe vera besides eating it and using it on burns. You can also use it on cuts and scrapes, including rather severe internal injuries. Aloe vera is a natural antiseptic, so smearing it on a cut, even if it's a deep cut, will help protect the wound from infection as well as accelerating the healing response by the body. If you'll notice, cutting off the leaf of an aloe vera doesn't harm the plant. The plant seals itself quickly, using the gel from inside the leaf that shrinks and seals itself when exposed to the air. The same thing happens on your skin, so pasting aloe vera gel on a wound and letting it dry in the air creates a natural band-aid. It actually seals itself up, pulling together the skin much like a suture or a band-aid. Of course, it's not a replacement for a suture in terms of long-term healing for a very deep cut, but it is an excellent way to protect yourself or someone you're treating until they can get to a trauma center and have stitches put in place.

And now, beyond eating aloe vera and using it both externally on your skin and even on deep wounds, these medical researchers are using it internally by actually injecting an extract from the aloe vera plant. Think about this -- they're injecting it right into the bloodstream, where it instantly enhances the viscosity of red blood cells and improves the diffusion of oxygen into the body's tissues, including the heart, the brain, muscles, lungs, and so on. This is simply miraculous. It's hard for me to overstate the astounding nature of this finding, and nature is the right word here, because it is nature that has provided this plant to us.

So, if there is an action item in all of this, that would be to grow your own aloe vera plants, and if you can't grow them, then purchase aloe vera gel products, and make sure they're made only with 100% aloe vera gel, not with added water. In fact, if you're purchasing an aloe vera product, and it isn't a clumpy looking gel substance, then it's not the real thing. Aloe vera gel does not look like water with a little bit of yellow color in it. That's mostly just some water with some aloe vera blended in. What you want is the real thing, the real gel, and one of the best makers of the gel is a company called Lily of the Desert. They are based in Texas, and they make several aloe vera gel products, and that's the product that I personally use when I'm not eating aloe vera leaves out of my own backyard. Take it upon yourself to learn more about aloe vera, and keep it handy in case of emergencies. This is a plant that belongs in every household, every ambulance and every emergency room in America.