Many Aloe Vera Products Lack a Crucial Ingredient: Aloe Vera

The first thing everyone needs to know about getting the greatest benefits from aloe vera is to choose the right form of the herb for the condition with which you are concerned.

• Aloe vera gel is applied directly to the skin to treat cuts, scrapes, minor burns, warts, cold sores, and herpes outbreaks. The gel is the sap inside the plant. It is rich in the plant chemical acemannan.
• Aloe vera bitters are the dried sap collected from the bottom of the leaf. They are used primarily to treat constipation, irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea predominating (IBS-D), and ulcerative colitis. They are taken in pill or capsule form. They are rich in anthroquinones.

• Aloe vera juice is squeezed from the whole leaf of the plant. Before it is processed, it contains both acemannan and anthroquinones. Sometimes it is decolorized to remove the yellow latex of the leaf. This makes it less laxative, but even the decolorized juice can cause loose bowels.
• Aloe vera spears are a vegetable, although they are primarily eaten in the Middle East and South Asia. They have beneficial effects in type 2 diabetes, much like the Mexican cactus nopal.

If you are looking for aloe vera gel capsules to be taken internally, maybe to relieve irritation in your digestive tract, you need to make sure that you are getting the gel extract, not the leaf extract. Some products like Carlson Aloe Vera Gel are actually extracted from the whole leaf, not just the gel. That isn't to say the product is worthless, but it won't have the optimal effect. Look for a product that is labeled as a gel extract and mentions acemannan on the label. Puritan's Pride reliably provides the gel extract.

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Aloe vera juice is not supposed to be a laxative. Commercial aloe vera juices should have the laxative chemicals aloin and emodin removed, leaving the soothing acemannan behind. Some products, unfortunately, leave out the acemannan (so there's no soothing) but leave in the aloin and emodin (so you spend a lot of time racing to the bathroom). Lily of the Desert Aloe Vera Juice provides the right plant chemicals in a drinkable juice at a low price; Herbalife aloe vera juice is also reliable but costs about ten times as much.

Aloe latex is a potent laxative. It's in the same class as frangula and cascara sagrada, the latter product also known as the "brown bomb." Don't take aloe latex pills unless you want to relieve constipation dramatically, and be aware that they can cause severe cramps that are relieved by bowel movement. Aloe ferox is more potently laxative than Aloe vera.  In North America and the UK, Nature's Way and Solgar are reliable brands.

Tender aloe vera leaves can be served as a vegetable. Make sure you don't cook the yellow sap (it smells something like body odor) and or the green lining of the leaf (it's potently laxative), then dice and poach them and serve over yogurt. An instructional video for preparing aloe is linked below.