In fact, there are thousands of commercial products available world wide which contain aloe. Unfortunately many of these cosmetic and health products do not contain enough aloe to be of significant benefit. In Jamaica, and in other tropical countries, many people have aloe growing in their gardens. In cooler climates it makes an excellent, trouble free house plant. I have had several aloe plants in my garden for all my life. I have never used fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides or any other garden treatment on them. I have never had to. They have never died in either drought or flood, they grow in shade or sun. If you root one out and throw it away then rescue it a month later and replant it, it will grow.

History

The history of aloe as medicine goes back to the ancient Egyptians who apparently used it both topically and internally as we still do today. It appears in medicine throughout history in various countries and in modern times has been the subject of medical research since the 1930s. Cleopatra was supposed to have bathed in aloe juice every day to retain her youth. In the Bible, it is said that Christ’s body was wrapped in aloe when he was removed from the Cross. Alexander the Great is supposed to have conquered the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean to reap the aloe growing there to treat his injured soldiers.

This article however is not about the history of the plant but rather about the amazing medicinal uses that nature has supplied us with in the aloe vera plant.

Koehler's Medicinal Plants 1887

Topical Use

Nowadays we apply sunscreen liberally and carefully limit our time in the sun. As a child and teenager, I spent many, many hours under the searing tropical sun. Sunburn was common and always treated with liberal doses of fresh aloe gel. As I grew older I started to avoid getting burned but still applied aloe after being out in the sun. If sunburn is treated immediately there is almost no likelihood of blistering. When applied to sunburn there is often an itching sensation but this goes away by the time the gel dries. It is not recommended for use as a sunscreen as using aloe before you go out in the sun may cause burning or blotchiness. Other burns and scalds also benefit from the application of aloe gel. For large burns you should always seek medical attention.

Topical application is the same for cuts and bruises. About twenty years ago my husband managed to cut off his thumb with a table saw. Husband and finger were quickly rushed to the doctor who immediately sent us to an orthopaedic surgeon. Dr. M. S. stitched back the thumb and sent us home. I immediately removed the dressing and applied aloe gel thickly all over the wound; I did this several times a day.  Two days later when we returned to the surgeon he remarked that the injury was clean and healing extremely quickly. I confessed my home treatment. He raised his eyebrows then gave permission to continue as it was “obviously not doing any harm.” Today, though the thumb does not function 100%, there is absolutely no scar.

I have also seen two cases of skin cancer successfully treated with the regular application of aloe gel, including one very advanced case, as well as heard about several others. However I would not suggest using aloe as an alternative to seeing your doctor as what works to treat one type of skin cancer in one individual might not work on another type or another person.

Aloe Drink

Aloe is also used as a drink as it is rich in antioxidants. One caution: aloin, the yellow sap which oozes out from between the skin and gel, should be avoided. This sap, which turns purple when dry and which gives aloe its characteristic bitter taste is a potent purgative and can be harmful in large quantities. To prepare your aloe drink, peel off all the skin and rinse the gel before putting it in the blender with a small amount of water and a teaspoon or two of honey. Alternately, mix half and half with fruit juice. Drinking a glass or two of aloe juice a day does wonders for the digestive tract and there is some evidence that it actually helps treat ulcers, cystitis and colitis. Some diabetics say that when they take aloe juice they are able to reduce their insulin use. If you are diabetic, speak to your doctor and be very careful about self medicating.

Cosmetic Use

Over the last decade or so aloe has become more and more popular as an ingredient in cosmetics. However, a lot of this is just marketing hype as the amount used in most commercial products is too minimal to do any good. Aloe is excellent as an astringent after washing your face. Your skin will feel tight but that is caused by the gel or juice drying on your skin not because it dries out your skin. One of our very popular uses in Jamaica is as a shampoo. The hair is saturated with aloe gel or liquid, allowed to dry then rinsed out. Aside from improving hair texture it also helps get rid of the build up of all the hair products we tend to use. It is also reported by many people that it helps to cure dandruff.

Why it Works

Throughout history, aloe has also been used to treat a host of ailments, from earache to athlete’s foot. Research and anecdotal evidence varies.

Research has shown that aloe vera works for a few very simple reasons. It is a natural antiseptic and helps retard bacterial growth, it promotes cell regeneration and, when applied topically, it dries and creates a film on the surface of the skin which helps protect the burn or abrasion.

Though aloe allergy is extremely rare, it might not be a bad idea, if you have never used it before, to apply a small amount under your arm and leave for twenty-four hours before using greater quantities. If there is any burning, redness or swelling wash it off immediately with a lot of water and do not use aloe at all.

While there are an overwhelming amount of books and websites devoted to aloe vera and its uses, I still use as my “bible” a small fifty page book from the 1980s called “Miracle Plants: Aloe Vera” written by Frena Bloomfield and published by Century Publishing, London. Its size makes it very easy to look up things and the author cites research on each individual use of the plant and includes a bibliography at the back. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find it online as it appears to be out of print.

My backyard aloe in bloom

What You Didn’t Know

I have noticed that when I have applied aloe all over after a shower, I am almost never bitten by mosquitoes or sandflies (gnats). I have recommended this to others who say it works for them too. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find any research on this.

Some years ago NASA did a study of several house plants in space. The idea was to identify those which were more effective in cleaning the air in an enclosed environment. Most Jamaican homes are still fairly open to fresh air but office buildings, as well as homes in many countries, are often tightly sealed with the same air constantly recirculating. This leads to something called “sick building syndrome,” where people in these buildings are constantly breathing in benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene. These chemicals are all around us in paints, carpets, particle board, plastic, even in our clothes. We can buy air purifiers or special filters for our air conditioners. Or we can keep certain plants indoors which help to clean the air without the cost of regularly changing filters. Chief among these plants is aloe vera. An aloe plant or two in your bedroom will drastically reduce the chemicals in the very air you breathe.

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But there is an even bigger picture. Should this oil slick reach land, which despite round the clock efforts it likely will, the entire ecosystem of the area will be devastated. Marine life is already suffering greatly. Gulls and pelicans that dive for fish get covered in the oil and drown. Turtles and manatees, already endangered, will die. We must also take into account the time of year. In spring lobsters, shrimp, fish and many other creatures breed. A time of renewal is becoming a time of death. Aside from the roughly 200,000 gallons of oil a day still gushing from the uncapped well, the vast oil slick cuts off light and oxygen so that even those creatures which do not get engulfed in oil may not survive. Those who survive will migrate elsewhere.

Can it get worse? Yes it can. If the oil enters that major current known as the Gulf Stream it can be carried up the North American coastline all the way to Labrador, across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom and northern Europe and south to West Africa. The potential is mind boggling!

And what about us who like to think that all is well in our own little bubble? Well, if oil gets into the Gulf Stream, and even if it doesn’t, it’s only a short distance from Florida to the Bahamas and then to Jamaica. And, by the way, the fish, the lobsters, the gulls and pelicans, the endangered turtles and manatees who ply our coasts are in many cases the very same ones who travel through the Gulf of Mexico!

Read about our endangered species and more at Jamaica-Allspice.com

We as Jamaicans have a very bad habit regarding many things. We talk a lot about our problems: crime, garbage, drought, the breakdown of our values. But how often do we actually do something about any of the things that bother us daily? Generally, we’re all bark and no bite.

Though Jamaica has many environmental issues, there are two of them which tend to stand out. The first is the disgusting condition of Kingston Harbour. The appalling thing is that this is so easily fixable. It has been suggested by environmentalists that 70% of the pollution in Kingston Harbour is a direct result of faulty sewerage plants operated by the National Water Commission. We have ourselves seen evidence to back this up. Recently, under our major water restrictions, friends took photographs of Kingston Harbour in which the Harbour looked as clean and blue as San San Bay. None of us in our lifetime have seen the Harbour look that pretty. Could it be that less water in our pipes generated less sewerage going through the treatment plants and therefore more efficient processing? Can anyone give a better explanation? Below is a photograph showing a very obvious red tide in the Harbour. Red tide is caused by very toxic algae which generates in polluted water. Not only does it kill fish and other marine life but, if it becomes airborne, it can seriously affect our health. Our health is also affected when we eat contaminated fish.

At the end of the day, why are we pumping the waste of more than 1,000,000 people into an almost completely enclosed Harbour? We are all obliged to come up with ways to pull our public entity, the National Water Commission, into the twenty-first century. And, of course, there is still the 30% of Harbour pollution which is caused by other sources.

Our second major environmental issue is our reluctance to recycle. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the preponderance of plastic bottles which litter almost every square inch of our landscape.  About ten years ago, GraceKennedy installed blue recycle bins across the city to allow us to collect our PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) bottles for recycling. They eventually discontinue the exercise as people used the bins as general garbage tipsters.

According to the Jamaica Environment Trust we throw away 250,000,000 PET bottles every year, that’s 90 bottles for each man, woman and child in the country! The JET operates a recycle depot at Earth House, 11 Waterloo Rd. Most of us who live in Kingston and St Andrew drive past Earth House regularly. Would it be any trouble for us to place a bin in our home to collect plastic bottles and then drop them off once a month? We likely wouldn’t even be going out of our way! They will even pick up large quantities from schools and business places.

Jamaicans, do your part. Starting today pick up one new habit to help keep our beautiful Island clean and healthy. Buy a water bottle and fill it every morning before you leave home instead of drinking commercial bottled water. If each of us made a tiny change it would all add up to a huge difference.

Visit the Earth Day Expo at Hope Gardens

Read more about Jamaica’s Environment at Jamaica-Allspice.com

In my opinion we hold on too much to “traditional exports.” We fight for a place on the world market for our bananas when the market seems to want bananas from Costa Rica. We then accept a lower price. Our bauxite industry has all but died a long and painful death. Recycling aluminium is a lot cheaper than mining and producing it from scratch. Good riddance I say to the deep red gouges in our green landscape. Sugar is no longer King. The King is dead, bury him! Jamaica is a small country; if there is a demand for something we produce we would never be able to produce enough of it to satisfy the market, the old “supply and demand” of basic business. Case in point: coffee.  Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee is in great demand worldwide. Unlike bananas, we set the price for our coffee and the market pays it. In the middle of a recession, income from coffee has increased by 30%. The same is true of cocoa. There is a limited area where these crops grow so we can’t put thousands of acres more into coffee and cocoa. We therefore need other products. We have hundreds of thousands of acres of sugar cane. Every year we accept lower prices on this crop which used to be the backbone of our economy. We will need some cane fields for domestic consumption and the production of another star export, rum. Some of our existing fields can be turned to the production of ethanol. This takes retooling and a fairly heavy financial outlay but isn’t that better in the long run than accepting half price for sugar?

Take a drive outside the cities. Wherever you go you are almost guaranteed to pass stands of bamboo on the roadside. In the countryside we use bamboo for fences, for scaffolding, even for homes. On small farms bamboo “pipes” are used for irrigation, small rivers are crossed on bamboo bridges and large ones navigated on bamboo rafts.  Children fish with bamboo poles and, unfortunately, some are disciplined with bamboo switches. In China and Japan, bamboo scaffolding is commonly used in construction.

There are many old wives’ tales about harvesting bamboo. But often those old wives were smart. The sugar content of bamboo rises and falls. The more sugar there is in the bamboo is the more attractive it is to insects. Sugar content is at its highest during the hottest time of the day. Harvesting bamboo at dawn during the full moon is actually the best time as the sugar content is lowest at that time! Bamboo also starts to rot from fungus after five to seven years. Bamboo is therefore best harvested between three to five and five to seven years, depending on the variety.

Bamboo grows at an incredible rate; it is the fastest growing plant on earth and can grow 24 inches (60 cm) per day. Bamboo plants reach maturity in three years. Because of this it is cheap and it is sustainable. Lumber and textiles made from bamboo are no longer niche products but are in incredibly high demand worldwide. In the U. S. one can buy bamboo flooring at any hardware store and bamboo sheets at your nearest department store. The bamboo products industry is anticipated to reach sales of twelve billion U S. dollars within two years. Why can’t Jamaica get a piece of that pie? Certainly with such an unbelievably high demand, the market would absorb as much bamboo lumber as we could produce. I can see it in my mind quite clearly: Acres and acres of former cane fields, already laid out, with irrigation in place, turned to bamboo and the huge sugar mills gutted and refitted to cure and laminate the lumber. Sugar cane and bamboo are both grasses, for all I know they could be planted and reaped using the same equipment. Maybe it’s time King Sugar was deposed in favour of the Big Bamboo!

Bamboo Avenue, St. Elizabeth

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I see from my back door rain clouds sitting over the hills and I would swear it’s raining there. Friends tell me that the Hope River looks very healthy, virtually overflowing its banks. Yet the Mona Dam (reservoir) is half empty and the No Water Conspiracy tells us we’re having the worst drought in twenty years and have reduced our supply to a mere trickle six hours a day. We appear lucky as places like Red Hills now get random supplies from a water truck no less!

	The Suffering

My garden is dying a horrible, painful death. My tomatoes and peppers have fallen to slugs, searching for some moisture. The roses have picked up the dreaded mealy bugs. The June roses, which tend to get scraggly at this time of year anyway, have all picked up what looks like a fungus. All diseases known and unknown are attacking on all fronts and I can’t spray or fertilise anything for it is so dry, they would be burned by the treatment, whether chemical or natural. At lease the oleander, plumbago and Chinese privet survive with little water and fall prey to no bug or disease so my hedges are fine.

	The Night Bloomers

Here’s a little advice to those in the same position: MULCH. Pack mulch around the roots of all your precious plants, leaving just an inch or two around the stems. Be very careful to use clean mulch as some things, like roses, might develop disease.  Don’t give shrubs planted in the ground a cup of water a day, you’re wasting the water, that won’t feed the roots. Rather give them a bucketful once a week poured on slowly in the early morning. Do not water at night as the slugs and other creepy crawlies searching for moisture will spend the night feasting on them. Prune all the dead and diseased branches off everything so that the healthy limbs get all the precious moisture. Things will still die but most will survive until they can be tended properly again.

Meanwhile, I look at pictures to remind me of what my garden looked like just a few short months ago and go through catalogues to decide what to fill the empty spaces with. The No Water Conspiracy will not win this fight!

	The Survivors

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From I was the tiniest thing, I would follow behind my grandmother as she sprinkled her magic dust in the garden. My grandmother had ten green fingers and every plant she touched would thrive. I have inherited only a tiny bit of that special touch but all of the love. When life becomes overpowering I disappear into pruning the roses or fighting white flies and nothing else matters…..until now!

I see from my back door rain clouds sitting over the hills and I would swear it’s raining there. Friends tell me that the Hope River looks very healthy, virtually overflowing its banks. Yet the Mona Dam (reservoir) is half empty and the No Water Conspiracy tells us we’re having the worst drought in twenty years and have reduced our supply to a mere trickle six hours a day. We appear lucky as places like Red Hills now get random supplies from a water truck no less!

The Suffering

My garden is dying a horrible, painful death. My tomatoes and peppers have fallen to slugs, searching for some moisture. The roses have picked up the dreaded mealy bugs. The June roses, which tend to get scraggly at this time of year anyway, have all picked up what looks like a fungus. All diseases known and unknown are attacking on all fronts and I can’t spray or fertilise anything for it is so dry, they would be burned by the treatment, whether chemical or natural. At lease the oleander, plumbago and Chinese privet survive with little water and fall prey to no bug or disease so my hedges are fine.

The Night Bloomers

Here’s a little advice to those in the same position: MULCH. Pack mulch around the roots of all your precious plants, leaving just an inch or two around the stems. Be very careful to use clean mulch as some things, like roses, might develop disease.  Don’t give shrubs planted in the ground a cup of water a day, you’re wasting the water, that won’t feed the roots. Rather give them a bucketful once a week poured on slowly in the early morning. Do not water at night as the slugs and other creepy crawlies searching for moisture will spend the night feasting on them. Prune all the dead and diseased branches off everything so that the healthy limbs get all the precious moisture. Things will still die but most will survive until they can be tended properly again.

Meanwhile, I look at pictures to remind me of what my garden looked like just a few short months ago and go through catalogues to decide what to fill the empty spaces with. The No Water Conspiracy will not win this fight!

The Survivors

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But wait, there’s more to it than that. There are some engines that cannot and should not use ethanol mixed petrol. Most cars made before 1986 as well as many high performance vehicles and more than a few European cars. Nissan cars made before 2004 will not operate properly,  that means me. Please check your car manual if you’re not sure or do some online research. I had posted a .pdf list on my website some months ago. Wheels Jamaica has some information as do many Australian automotive websites.

One and two stroke engines don’t operate properly either. What does that mean: lawnmowers, chainsaws and other gas powered tools as well as most motorcycles. E10 should not be used in marine engines as it attracts water.

E10 does not have a shelf life of more than a few weeks and should not be stored for more than three months under any circumstances as it tends to break down and attract moisture. If you store gas for your generator it doesn’t matter as generators shouldn’t use it either.

However, before we condemn ethanol based gas altogether remember one important thing. E10 contains less contaminants, burns more efficiently and significantly reduces the production of greenhouses gases.

Most cars on our roads can effectively use the ethanol mixture but we cannot decree that henceforth only E10 will be available in our pumps. We must work towards producing other forms of petrol/alternates which will allow us to operate our lawnmowers, generators, fishing boats and old jalopies in a cleaner, more efficient manner.

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