Q: What are the benefits of drinking aloe vera juice?
A:
If you do a Google search for ‘aloe vera juice’ you’ll quickly conclude
that drinking aloe vera juice is the ultimate healthy habit, as it
seemingly aids in weight loss,
digestion, immune function, and even ‘easing general discomfort’. But
when you look beyond the first 40+ search results (all of the sites that
list the amazing benefits of aloe vera juice just before they sell you
an ongoing monthly supply), it’s a different, more accurate story.
What
is interesting about aloe vera juice is that despite the huge marketing
push to educate people on its benefits, there is very little scientific
data to support its use in humans. What’s more, some of the toxicity
research done in animals is alarming.
Information
regarding aloe vera’s use dates back nearly 5,000 years to early
Egyptian times. It has since been used both topically and orally. Aloe
vera gel, found when you break open the green leafy skin, is often used
topically to treat burns, abrasions, psoriasis, and other skin
conditions. Aloe vera juice, primarily produced from the green outer
leaf, was used as a main component in many over-the-counter laxatives
until 2002, when the FDA pulled them from drugstore shelves due to
insufficient information regarding their safety.
Safety
concerns about drinking aloe vera juice have continued to grow after
the release of the findings from a two-year study by the National
Toxicology Program. According to this study, when researchers gave rats
whole-leave extract of aloe vera juice, there was "clear evidence of
carcinogenic activity in male and female rats, based on tumors of the
large intestine."
But before you go telling people that aloe vera causes cancer, there are a couple things to consider:
1.
This study was done in animals. We don’t know what would happen in
humans, but these negative results should be enough to make you proceed
with caution until more information is available.
2.
Consider what kind of aloe vera was used in this study. The researchers
used non-decolorized, whole-leaf aloe vera extract. The way aloe vera
is processed can impact the different compounds found in the plant and
thus the impact on your body. For example, when manufacturers decolorize
aloe vera leaf (a process in which the aloe vera is passed through a
charcoal filter), the components that give aloe vera its laxative
properties, the anthraquinones, are removed. One specific anthraquinone
called Aloin is thought to be the driving force behind tumor development
in the animal study.
But it's not all
bad news for aloe vera juice. In a 2004 study from the U.K.,
researchers gave people with active ulcerative colitis, a type of
inflammatory bowel disease, aloe vera gel to drink (remember that in the
animal study, they used aloe vera juice, not gel). After four weeks of
drinking aloe vera gel in water twice per day, there was a clinical
response towards improvement and remission of ulcerative colitis,
compared to those given plain water. No significant negative side
effects were experienced due to drinking the aloe vera gel.
As
you can see, the aloe vera story is not as clear cut as many drink
labels want you to believe. My personal recommendation is that you
should wait for more human research to show that aloe vera provides
significant health benefits without negative side effects. If you do
choose to drink aloe vera at this time, check with your doctor first,
and then make sure that whatever product you use does not contain Aloin.