Baldness Cure That Will Loosen Your Bowels

Harlingen, Texas - Something about the aloe plant evokes the image of a gifted child who needs little coaxing to do well.

It takes root under perverse conditions - hot, dry weather preferred. Its healing powers are said to give soothing comfort to everything from burns to ulcers. It can be processed into juice, a capsule or shampoo.

800ha of aloe vera being harvested With little tending, the crop is turning a more steady profit than old mainstays such as cotton and sugar ever could.

An acre (about 0,4 hectares) yields 2 300 to 3 200 kilogrammes monthly. Growers net about 10 cents per acre, or $500 to $700 (between R5 000 and R7 000) for each acre harvested. That's four times the average for cotton and grain, and on a par with sugar cane, which is more expensive to grow.

There are about 800ha of aloe vera being harvested in the Rio Grande Valley - 95 percent of the aloe grown in the United States. From the expressway linking the region's small cities, neat rows of the pointy plant are a curious break from a landscape of prickly pear and mesquite.

"Normally you see them as a small-statured house plant," said Robert Lonard, a University of Texas-Pan American biologist who specialises in Rio Grande Valley flora. "Here, they're more spectacular because they grow right outside."

Sometimes, not intentionally, Lonard said with a laugh as he remembered how he once threw his aloe plants on the compost pile only to have the aloe root there.

Aloe is believed to have originated in Africa Aloe that was planted decades ago now grows waist high in front of boarded-up homes in a former retirement community.

In his own childhood, Harlingen Mayor Connie de la Garza recalls, the ooze inside the long, waxy leaves was also the answer to everything from scrapes to sore stomachs. "When we were kids growing up... we used to get a cut, someone would run out to slice a piece," he said.

The aloe is a succulent plant, with leaves that can hold water for long periods at a time. Too much water, however, can rot the plant, and it would take the most severe drought to dry it out. That makes it an ideal match for the valley, which gets little rainfall but is irrigated by the Rio Grande.

The plant's only other enemy is cold, which rules the crop out for most areas to the north and west, where nighttime temperatures fall during the winter.

In 1983, a rare freeze wiped out the valley's citrus crop and devastated roadside palm trees. It also killed the aloe.

Aloe is believed to have originated in Africa and has been traded through the ancient world as far as India and the Far East. It's believed the Sumarians used aloe as a laxative, the Greeks to stop hair loss. The Roman physician Pliny the Elder recommended it as an anti-perspirant. The Bible mentions the plant as part of the mixture used to embalm Jesus Christ.

More recently, Cold War-era scientists found it effective in treating radiation burns. Japanese researchers have reported anti-tumor agents, and doctors in India have told diabetics to ingest it to lower glucose levels.

Spanish conquistadors and missionaries brought the plant with them to the new world, and the popularity of the hardy plant quickly spread throughout Mexico.

Curandantes, the folk healers who occupy storefronts throughout South Texas's steamy downtowns, still peddle a host of aloe vera treatments that have been handed down throughout the centuries.

Unable to pinpoint, extract or mimic the plant's "miracle" properties, researchers have concluded it's a combination of elements, including amino acids; sterols, which act like cortisone to combat inflammation; and salicylic acid, an aspirin-like compound. Its stickiness helps bind wounds.

Split a leaf and you'll find little tubules clinging to the outer rind, from which comes a sticky liquid that has been isolated for medicinal uses. The "inner fillet" - the gelatinous inner membrane - is processed for cosmetic uses, such as lotions or shampoos.

Polysaccharides, which work with the immune system, may be the most important elements for healing. They're sometimes used to treat cancer in house cats.

"It is the 200-plus constituents working synergistically together," said Gene Hane of the International Aloe Science Council. "Aloe Vera does so many tremendous things, it's kind of hard to see where the benefits begin and end."

As manager of Harlingen's Aloe Laboratories, a $2-million factory opened last year by the Japanese-owned Harmony Green, Luis Rodriguez's goal is to process large quantities of the plant without destroying its purported healing powers.

During a recent tour, he showed how field workers cut the mature leaves by hand - there's no good way to do it mechanically - then fill crates that are driven to the factory a few kilometres away.

From there, he said, the skins are removed from the fillets, which are then pasteurised and processed into juices, capsules and gels. Warehouse shelves are laden with products packed for export around the world.

United States retailers are just catching on to the demand for aloe juices or tonics. And while Americans have embraced the plant as a topical treatment for sunburn and chafed skin, in other parts of the world it is as likely to be consumed internally to guard against everything from ulcers to Aids. In the Caribbean, it is acknowledged as the bonafide topical remedy for children who suck their thumb.

Rodriguez, a Mexican-born chemist, swears by the plant's powers. Whether in the fields or the factory, he has taken to drinking the juice - much like the Japanese do. And he is first to experiment with new aloe products.

"If you ask me when was I last sick, I'd say I don't know," he said. "Ten years... not even a small cold." - Sapa-AP

Hey, we cover all the news on FR.

My 85 year old mother uses aloe for everything!

Also, I used to travel on SW Airlines from Houston to Dallas twice a week and I frequently met people on the plane from Harlingen. There's something unique about people from Harlingen that I was never exactly able to identify. Maybe it is the aloe?

Before we were married, my wife suffered large 3rd degree burns to her legs in a classroom lab accident. Her primary care physician had the forsight to send her to a burn specialist who use massive quantities aloe during her treatment. She applied aloe in pure extract form externally, and he even had her drink a ton of aloe juice to get it working on the burn from the inside. Today she has absolutely no scarring, discoloration or anything, you wouldn't know that she had even suffered any burns. Old, traditional burn treatments wouldn't have done as well. Thank God for aloe!

There's an aloe rose of Texas
That ah am gonna see-
She helps to cure mah baldness
An' keeps mah bowels free....

" I also think there is something different about people from Harlingen. Unlike you, I have not figured out what it is yet."

Below is what I said. I haven't figured it out either

"There's something unique about people from Harlingen that I was never exactly able to identify."

It grows very well here in the hot desert of SoKal. We always make sure to have at least a small plant someplace outside.

I have several aloe plants growing in my herb garden in Houston. Its been several years since we had a freeze that would kill it. Is this going to be the year?

Before we moved out here (no freezes!), we lived at elevation north of Lost Angeles.....had quite a few aloes growing in-ground around the yard, and never suffered from freezes - altho we didn't get horrible low temps; maybe in the high twenties.

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