aloe vera Archives - Amazing Health Advances

Treating Psoriasis with Aloe Vera

AHA Publisher — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 08:00:25 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease that affects about one in 40 people, making it “one of the most frequent chronic skin diseases worldwide.” There are a lot of different drugs for it, some of which cost more than $100,000 a year to get a response. There are cheaper ones, like cyclosporine, but they carry long-term risks of kidney damage, hypertension, and malignancies. In fact, cyclosporine can cause cancer and kidney toxicity in more than 50 percent of the patients treated long-term, and, in terms of risk of malignancies, it carries up to 42 times the rate of cancer. And it doesn’t even work that well: It only keeps the disease at bay in a little more than half of the patients over a four-month period. There’s got to be a better way. What about plants? “Topical botanical agents for the treatment of psoriasis?” As I discuss in my video Aloe Vera for Psoriasis, aloe vera gel is said to possess “anti-inflammatory, anti-pruritic [anti-itching], and wound-healing properties.” You may recall that it actually made things worsewhen it was put to the test for healing wounds. (See my earlier video Is Aloe Effective for Blood Pressure, Inflammatory Bowel, Wound Healing, and Burns?.) “The exploitation of aloe preparations has been accompanied too often by misinformation and exaggerated claims in advertising literature and commercially-inspired articles in the press and popular periodicals.” There is some impressive evidence, though. For example, to test its anti-inflammatory properties, it was tested head-to-head against steroids for exposure to mustard gas. Mustard gas is probably the most widely used chemical warfare agent. It was first used in World War I, and the last widespread military use was in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, with more than 100,000 military veterans and civilians exposed, “and many of them are still suffering from long-term complications,” predominantly itching. Even decades after surviving a gas attack, 70 to 90 percent of victims are still suffering. Topical steroids, the most frequently administered medications, do help, but long-term use is associated with a variety of side effects and is not recommended. How about safer agents, like aloe vera? Sixty-seven veterans injured by chemical warfare were randomized to apply either steroids or an aloe vera and olive oil cream, and the aloe vera mixture appeared to work as well as the drug, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:27 in my video. So, researchers decided to give it a try for the management of psoriasis. By the end of a month-long study, the aloe vera-based cream had cured 83 percent of the patients, compared to the placebo’s cure rate of less than 10 percent, and resulted in “significant clearing of the psoriatic plaques,” the skin lesions. That’s compared to an inactive placebo, though. How about compared to steroids? Aloe was found to be “more effective…in reducing the clinical symptoms of psoriasis,” as you can see in before-and-after photos below and at 3:02 in my video. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of a commercial aloe vera gel for the treatment of slight to moderate psoriasis, conditions improved in 70 percent of the sites treated with aloe, compared with 80 percent of the placebo-treated areas improving. The placebo beat out the aloe. Indeed, “the high response rate of placebo indicated a possible effect…in its own right, which would make the Aloe vera gel treatment appear less effective.” The placebo was essentially xanthan gum and water, and the researchers figured that, instead of aloe failing, maybe xanthan gum works, too! All in all, for psoriasis, the “results on the effectiveness of Aloe vera are contradictory,” but applying it on the skin appears safe, so why not give it a try? You may be interested in my video Is Aloe Effective for Blood Pressure, Inflammatory Bowel, Wound Healing, and Burns?. I have many others in my extended series on aloe, and the most amazing one is probably Can Aloe Cure Cancer?. Also check out Aloe Vera Gel: Best Treatment for Lichen Planus? and Aloe for the Treatment of Advanced Metastatic Cancer. PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my free videos here and watch my live, year-in-review presentations—2015: Food as Medicine: Preventing and Treating the Most Dreaded Diseases with Diet, and my latest, 2016: How Not to Die: The Role of Diet in Preventing, Arresting, and Reversing Our Top 15 Killers. Key Takeaways One of the most frequent and chronic skin diseases worldwide, psoriasis may be treated with drugs that have side effects, such as causing cancer and kidney toxicity. Aloe vera gel has been touted as being anti-inflammatory and anti-itching, as well as having wound-healing properties. Misinformation and exaggerated claims are too often associated with aloe preparations in advertisements and commercially-inspired press. When tested against steroids for exposure to mustard gas, the most widely used chemical warfare agent, aloe appeared to work as well as the drug. In a month-long study, an aloe-based cream cured more than 80 percent of psoriasis patients, compared to the inactive placebo’s cure rate of less than 10 percent. When compared to steroids, aloe more effectively reduced clinical symptoms of psoriasis, but, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, a placebo of xanthan gum and water was more effective in treating slight to moderate psoriasis than aloe, 80 percent improvement compared with 70 percent, respectively. Topical application of aloe appears to be safe, so why not try it for psoriasis? To read the original article click here.

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Aloe Is Put to the Test Against Cancer

AHA Publisher — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 07:00:18 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – From a case report to a randomized controlled trial, aloe is put to the test against cancer. For a half century, aloe vera “gel processors and distributors armed with biblical quotes and anecdotal testimonials…[have sought] recognition for their products”—too often, however, “accompanied by misinformation,” none more elaborate than promoting aloe vera for the treatment of cancer. As I discuss in my video Can Aloe Cure Cancer?, there was a recent case report involving a 64-year-old Hispanic woman with a tumor on her eyeball, which, as you can see below and at 0:31 in my video, looked like a classic case of ocular surface squamous neoplasia (OSSN), a type of eye cancer. Surgery was recommended to remove it, “but the patient declined it, and instead initiated the use of concentrated A. vera eye drops 3 times daily based on a friend’s suggestion.” She just used an off-the-shelf aloe vera gel product, and, to the doctor’s surprise, the “lesion showed significant improvement from only 1 month before….At the follow-up 2 months later, the patient’s lesion was noted to have dramatically regressed.” When the case report was written, “6 years since her initial presentation,” it appeared the cancer was gone and had stayed gone, as you can see below and at 1:04 in my video. Normally, you’d go in and cut out the cancer with wide margins to make sure you got it all, because “despite the best efforts of the ocular surgeon…recurrence rates as high as 56% have been reported because of the presence of microscopic disease that is not clinically evident at the time of surgical excision.” In other words, little bits of cancer may be missed on surgery. In this case, though, a tumor disappeared without any surgery at all. Are we sure it was cancerous? The patient had refused a biopsy, so we don’t know for certain. However, it did have all the defining characteristics. So, to see the tumor disappear without any side effects and stay gone is pretty extraordinary. “Surgical resection still remains a very reasonable treatment option for many cases of OSSN,” but at least there’s an option for patients to try if they don’t want to go down that route. Of course, this was just a single case report without a control group. It isn’t as though she had tumors in both eyes and tried the aloe on only one. There was a controlled study that I present at 2:08 in my video that suggested aloe could prolong survival in those with advanced untreatable cancer, but it wasn’t a randomized controlled study. A decade later, we got just that. Hundreds of patients with metastatic cancer were randomized to receive chemotherapy with or without aloe, and, as you can see below and at 2:28 in my video, the aloe group had three times the number of complete responses and significantly greater objective tumor responses, and two-thirds had some level of disease control compared to only half in the non-aloe group. But, does that translate out into improved survival? Yes. For example, at one year, 70 percent of the aloe group were still alive, whereas most in the non-aloe group had died. As a bonus, the “chemotherapy was substantially better tolerated” in the aloe group, with less fatigue, for example, and better maintenance of their immune system, as you can see below and at 2:59 in my video. So, given the better disease control and the better survival, “this study seems to suggest that Aloe may be successfully associated with chemotherapy [as an add-on therapy] to increase its efficacy in terms of both tumor regression rate and survival time.” As I mentioned, this was a randomized controlled study, but it wasn’t a randomized placebo-controlled study. It’s not as though the control group got a fake aloe drink, so some of the tumor response may have been a mind-over-matter placebo effect. There are potential downsides to aloe, though. As I explained in my video Is Aloe Vera Gel the Best Treatment for Lichen Planus?, in rare cases, swallowing aloe can trigger liver inflammation and cause electrolyte imbalances due to diarrhea or vomiting. For example, there was a case reported of aloe-induced low potassium in a patient with breast cancer, which rapidly resolved once she stopped the aloe, thought to be due to the laxative effect aloe can have. If you want to talk to your doctor about giving it a try, note this was not aloe vera, but aloe arborescens, a tree-like aloe that can grow to be ten feet tall, as you can see below and at 4:08 in my video. The concoction the researchers made was a mixture of about two thirds of a pound of fresh aloe leaves to a pound of honey, plus about three tablespoons of 40 percent alcohol, and it was given orally at a dose of two teaspoons three times a day starting six days prior to the onset of chemotherapy. Key Takeaways Aloe vera has been promoted as a cancer treatment for decades. In one case report, a 64-year-old woman declined surgery to remove a tumor on her eyeball that looked cancerous and instead used an off-the-shelf aloe gel product three times a day. The lesion regressed dramatically and appeared to go—and stay—away. Biopsy was refused, so it isn’t known whether the tumor was in fact cancerous, but it appeared so. When hundreds of patients with metastatic cancer were randomized to receive chemo with or without aloe, the aloe group experienced significantly greater objective tumor responses, more disease control, and improved survival, compared with the non-aloe group. As well, chemo was better tolerated in the aloe group, so researchers found that aloe may be an effective add-on therapy to chemo “to increase its efficacy in terms of both tumor regression rate and survival time.” If you’re interested in talking with your physician about this, please note that aloe arborescens, a tree-like aloe that can grow to be ten feet tall, was used, not aloe vera. The researchers used a mixture of about two thirds of a pound of fresh aloe leaves to a pound of honey, plus about three tablespoons of 40 percent alcohol, and it was given orally at a dose of two teaspoons three times a day starting six days prior to the onset of chemotherapy. Swallowing aloe can trigger liver inflammation and cause electrolyte imbalances due to diarrhea or vomiting, and aloe may have a laxative effect. To read the original article click here.

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Is Aloe Effective for Blood Pressure, Inflammatory Bowel, Wound Healing, and Burns?

AHA Publisher — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 08:00:35 +0000

Michael Greger M.D. FACLM via Nutrition Facts – I discuss the risks and benefits of aloe vera. “Aloe vera is one of the most popular home remedies in use today, yet most physicians know little about it. In fact, most dismiss it as useless while their patients firmly believe in its healing properties…The usual tendency of most physicians and nurses is to dismiss as useless any popular remedy that can be purchased without a prescription. However, the aloe plant deserves a closer look because, surprising as it may seem, there may be a scientific basis for some of its uses.” It has, after all, been used medicinally for thousands of years by a number of ancient civilizations, but only recently has it been put it to the test, as I discuss in my video Is Aloe Effective for Blood Pressure, Inflammatory Bowel, Wound Healing, and Burns?. What type of tests, though? Ones that investigate whether aloe can ameliorate damage to albino rat testicles or affect the cholesterol and estrogen responses in juvenile goldfish? Indeed, if you inject aloe into the bloodstream of rats, their blood pressure drops, but if you feed it to humans, it doesn’t appear to have any blood pressure–lowering effect. Drinking aloe causescolorectal tumors to form in rats, whereas it appears to have anti-inflammatory effects on human intestinal lining in a petri dish. But, when put to the test for irritable bowel syndrome (IBD), no benefit was found for improving symptoms or improving quality of life in IBS patients. And, no benefit was found for IBD either. What about the beneficial effects of aloe in wound healing? Evidently, they are “so miraculous as to seem more like myth than fact.” It works when you slice open guinea pigs or try to frostbite-off the ears of bunny rabbits, as you can see at 1:49 in my video (though, be warned about graphic images), but in people, it may make things worse. Indeed, “aloe vera…is associated with a delay in wound healing.” Researchers studied 21 women who had wound complications after having a cesarean or other abdominal surgery. Healing on their own took an average of 53 days, whereas the wounds treated with aloe vera gel required 83 days, taking 50 percent longer. Researchers thought the aloe would help, based on the animal studies, but when it was put to the test with people, it failed. At this point in my research, it was looking like the only benefit of aloe was to improve the quality of cheap beef burgers, as one study found. But what about burns? Aloe has been used to treat burns since antiquity, but, in their ageless wisdom, people were also applying feces to burns, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in ancient medical traditions. That’s why we have science. What is the effectiveness of aloe vera gel compared with silver sulphadiazine as burn wound dressing in second-degree burns? “The introduction of topical antimicrobial agents has resulted in a significant reduction in burn mortality to date.” Silver sulfadiazine is the most commonly used, but, unfortunately, it may delay wound healing and become toxic to the kidneys and bone marrow. So, researchers tried it head-to-head against topical aloe gel. The result? The burns treated with aloe healed 50 percent faster, and the pain went away about 30 percent faster. The researchers concluded that aloe has “remarkable efficacy” in the treatment of burn injuries. Anyone see the flaw in that logic? What was this study missing? A placebo control group. Why would that matter? Remember, one of the side effects of the silver sulphadiazine is delayed wound healing. So, maybe the aloe worked better just because it wasn’t delaying healing but it wouldn’t have worked better than nothing at all. When it was put to the test against nothing—aloe vera in Vaseline versus the Vaseline alone—the aloe really did seem to help, speeding up healing by about a third. And, indeed, if you put all the studies together, aloe vera does appear to significantly speed up the healing of second-degree burns. Blistering burns, however, are thankfully less common than burns like sunburns, where your skin just turns red. What is the efficacy of aloe vera in the prevention and treatment of sunburn? An aloe vera cream was applied to study subjects 30 minutes before, immediately after, or both before and after they were burned with a UV lamp. Surprisingly, the “results showed that the aloe vera cream has no sunburn or suntan protection and no efficacy in sunburn treatment when compared to placebo.” It at least works for blistering burns, though, so should we keep some aloe vera gel in the medicine cabinet? The problem is that aloe vera you buy at the store may not contain any aloe vera at all. The product labels may say aloe vera is the first or second ingredient, but manufacturers apparently can be lying. “There’s no watchdog assuring that aloe products are what they say they are,” which means suppliers are on an honor system—but when health and nutrition are mixed with profit, honor, too often, goes out the window. KEY TAKEAWAYS Aloe vera, a popular home remedy, has been used medicinally for thousands of years. Findings from studies using aloe vera on animals were significantly different from studies on humans. Rats’ blood pressure drops when they are injected with aloe, but there’s no blood pressure–lowering effect in people, for example, and although drinking aloe causes colorectal tumors to form in rats, it seems to be an anti-inflammatory to human intestinal lining, though no benefit was found for irritable bowel syndrome. Aloe has been found to be beneficial in wound healing in animals, but humans’ wounds took 50 percent longer to heal when treated with aloe vera gel. Topical aloe vera gel appears to significantly speed up the healing of blistering, second-degree burns, compared to both a placebo control and silver sulphadiazine, the most commonly used topical antimicrobial agent. For milder burns, like sunburns, researchers found that aloe vera cream was not effective for the protection or treatment of sunburn, compared to placebo. Aloe vera gels and creams may not actually contain any aloe vera despite it being listed as an ingredient, and, as the industry is not monitored, the deception may continue. To read the original article click here.

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