I've always had an aloe vera plant that I've used for burns. Takes the pain away immediately. It's also antiseptic and helps scrapes and wounds heal, but I read somewhere a long time ago that it wasn't good to ingest aloe.
But now I'm finding that it is very good for you to eat or drink it. It is good for your digestive tract and also helps your blood move through your arteries and carry more oxygen to all the cells of your body as described in this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Here's an article at Newstarget that talks about how good it is for your cardiovascular system. I just wish it tasted better; you have to add it to something else, and my daughter refused to use it on her sunburns when she was young, because she said it smelled like sweat.
Aloe is pretty easy to grow. For me the biggest danger is over watering it. Since my last move I hadn't had any aloe, so I bought a little container at Walmart for about $5 that had 4 little plants in it. Two plants I left out in the hot windy deck last summer, and they didn't do so well. One actually sent up a little flower (the one in the picture). I guess it thought it was going to die, and it had to procreate before passing on. They say it is better for your system if it is a bigger plant, so it will take a year or two to get mine big enough.
You can get a free aloe ($3 for shipping and handling) and lots of info from Aloe Vera Plant Products. Also Neem Tree Farms (I want to get one of those neem trees one of these days.) has Aloe Barbadensis, which they claim is most often used in herbal remedies. I don't know about that but it's only $7. The aloe in the Pitt lab photo looks to me like an ordinary aloe .
