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My Foot's Love Affair With Aloe Vera

Just before Christmas last year, we moved to a brand new house; just before it was finished, we had visited several times to check progress. At the time I thought nothing of it, going inside and walking bare foot on fresh, but dried, cement.

After we moved in, I started to see a lot of dry skin appear on the bottom of my foot, and had a large patch peeling away. Unfortunately, a foot spa therapist, who came to treat a callous on my toe, decided she would file the bottom of my foot too. Big mistake; by the next day the foot was raw.

I was sure the problem was an allergy, but was baffled, as I had never had any skin problem on my foot before, but it only started concern me after it started hurting. From then on it deteriorated, and the skin was cracking and opening up. Every time it started to feel better, I walked, and a wound would open up somewhere on the bottom of the foot.

A friend of my wife said she thought it might be caused by cement. A bit of research confirmed that cement allergy is quite common, as there are some quite nasty chemicals in there. In fact, some call it a cement burn, an equivalent of a first degree burn. It made sense now, so the research started on cement allergy, and first degree burns.

Aloe Vera quickly came to the top of the list for possible natural treatments, and there is a plant owned by our neighbor, just a few metres from our front door. We tried the fresh gel on my foot, with the owners permission of course, and the cool gel brought immediate relief, so my wife continued to apply it to the bottom of my foot every day. Problem was, it was only a small plant, so we had to stop.

My wife remembered a previous neighbor just 100 metres away had a much larger plant, which turned out to be a Mexican variety left by a representative of a herbal company. Long thick and succulent leaves gave us a big supply for a couple of weeks,and I tried having a block of gel on the foot at night. It worked wonders, and proved to be the breakthrough in the healing process.

The great things about Aloe Vera gel are that:

1. it absorbs right through the layers of skin, where its antibacterial and other properties work away at healing the skin properly;

2. it absorbs very quickly, and that means you can apply more regularly without harm, and expediting the results;

3. it feels so cool and soothing on raw skin;

4. it can be applied directly to open wounds, it is such a powerful antibacterial gel.

5. it retains water so well, after all, it is a succulent that thrives in a desert.


We had to stop using that plant too as it was looking denuded, but the owner of our compound pointed out another native plant in a corner of the garden. I had just one small area left that needed the full night treatment again. The native Aloe Vera worked its magic, and now several days have past without any soreness or pain.

Apparently, Aloe Vera is so rich in nutrients, including antioxidants, that it is worth eating some gel every day to boost immunity, making it not just a skin repairer but also a great health food .

We are now busy gathering cuttings to build up a stock of Aloe Vera plants as a permanent first aid kit and food supplement.

More Blueberries For Tea?

The last few years have seen a great deal of interest in the health benefits of red and blue skinned fruits. Much of the study, and publicity, has revolved around grapes and red wine, and in particular the compound Resveratrol.

However, the humble blueberry fruit has not been neglected as a subject of investigation, and a recent study by scientists at Rutgers University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture produced some significant findings.

This time, it was colon cancer that was being studied, and the effect on the disease of a compound called pterostilbene. Rats were used for this study, and at the end of an eight-week period of the study, the rats that were fed pterostilbene showed 57 percent fewer pre-cancerous lesions in their colon compared to the control group. The researchers erported that there was also evidence that pterostilbene reduced colonic cell proliferation, and inhibited certain genes involved in inflammation, both of which are considered colon cancer risk factors, the researchers say.

A small study maybe, but nonetheless another indication that some our natural foods have medicinal qualities not hitherto appreciated.

Broccoli Teams up With Tomatoes as Superfood Partners

Watching satellite television of few weekends ago, after my wife had called me downstairs to watch, I was intrigued to see coverage of the recent study into the health effects of broccoli and tomato. I had already read of the report, and had started to look into it, but what impressed me most about the program was that it was aimed at school children.

The program itself was on an Australian channel, presented in a teaching manner as if in a classroom. The "teacher" provided simple explanations along the way of the less common words children may not be aware of, such as antioxidants. Given that the news of the broccoli plus tomato study had only recently been released, I was very impressed. Good for Australia, I thought, taking children's education into the realm of health and diet; excellent. I just hope there were children watching, not just adults such as my wife and I far off in the Philippines.

If you have not heard of the study, it was reported in the Cancer Research Magazine in January this year, and took place at the University of Illinois. The study involved rats which were implanted with prostate cancer cells. They were divided into several groups for the study, and comparisons were made between those which were fed broccoli powder alone, tomato powder alone, lycopene alone and a group who were fed both broccoli and tomato powders. Another group was fed a prostate drug, and yet another castrated.

The study results showed that the combination of tomato and broccoli powders fared the best in shrinking the prostate growths, so it looks like the synergy between broccoli and tomato is a promising prospect for the future treatment of prostate cancer. No doubt further scientific studies will reveal more.

Arnica - A Home First Aid Essential For Bruising and Inflammation

I have never really thought of Arnica as a herb, but only as a homeopathic treatment. It is usually found in homeopathic first aid kits, and I always used to keep it around the home when still living in England. A herb it is, though. Arnica is a plant found in Northern Europe with pretty daisy like flowers.

Mostly, homeopathic treatments are for certain individuals for certain conditions and symptoms. Homeopathy is about the whole person, a holistic form of medicine which I discovered had some powerful uses back in the mid 1980's. For a genuine homeopath to treat a patient, they need a long consultation to get the full picture of the patients personality as well as medical history, and current problems. The homeopath may treat different people with identical symptoms with a different remedy.

Arnica, though, is a remedy that does seem to work with a wide range of people, hence its effectiveness as a first aid treatment, usually for inflammation and bruising. I wish I had know it when I was being crippled by Ankylosing Spondilytis in the 1970's.

When it came to the 1990's, I had to have two more hip replacements, making it hip joints number 5 and 6. By then, I had been off NSAIDS , the anti-inflammatory group of drugs, for more than 10 years. I had such confidence in Arnica by the time of the two operations, that on both occasions I took my arnica remedy bottle into hospital, knowing that I would be offered an NSAID after being cut open, sawed with a hacksaw, hammered with a hammer, and sown up again. On the second occasion, the surgeon broke my thigh in the process, just to add a bit of variety.

After the first operation the nurse came in with my medication. I looked suspicously at one tablet: "Anti-inflammatory?" I asked. It was.

I declined and showed her my arnica bottle. Later the surgeon came in, and when I mentioned the arnica, he said "that's good." He was understanding and not at all put out. He had come to learn the effectiveness of arnica for inflammation and bruising from other patients.

So, arnica was all I took to relieve pain, bruising and inflammation. The first time was an experiment; the second time the surgeon never even prescribed the anti-inflammatory.

When I moved to the Philippines there was no hope of finding homeopathic treatments, and when our daughter was born and getting mobile I wanted to keep arnica in the house for all those inevitable falls. I ordered some from the US, and it has been used often for my clumsy daughter for the last two years.

Yesterday, I had an emergency phone call from my wife, I thought at the local market. She couldn't talk, but handed the phone to her friend. "Please, come quick to the medical center", she told me. "Mhe Ann can't walk, and she blacked out."

Her dizzy black out had probably been caused by a spasm in the back as she heard a click in the base of her spine. The doctor prescribed several medications, one of which was an NSAID. After discussing it later, she preferred to try arnica after my very bad experiences with NSAIDS.

She rubbed the arnica ointment on the source of the back pain, and eventually fell asleep. When she woke in the night, just a few hours later, she felt no pain. Another victory for arnica? Probably, it has never really let me down when needed.

Should We Take Food Supplements?

The question of whether we should take food supplements has been debated endlessly, and there is no single answer that all will agree to. When I first took an interest in diet and health, and supplementation, more than 20 years ago, the standard view of doctors was that you do not need food supplements. Eat and drink a good diet, and you will get all the vitamins and minerals you need - that was what doctors would say.

That was the public view anyway, although I could not help but note, when I visited the home of a doctor I knew in England, that he had a good supply of multivitamins and minerals on a kitchen shelf. He also had a couple of other vitamin bottles, vitamin E and one other I fail to remember after all this time. Interestingly, he had always been a "scotch in the evening" man, but had suddenly switched to red wine. I made no comment, just smiled inwardly. I was a red wine drinker anyway, and I had been taking a general multivitamin and mineral for some time already.

By the early 80's, the health food revolution was already under way, and the food supplement industry preparing for rapid growth over the next 25 years. I ignored what doctors were saying, and started taking a general multivitamin and mineral supplement. I did so through common sense and logic, for the following reasons:

1. A good diet may have provided all the vitamins and minerals needed 200 years ago, so in a way the doctors were probably right.

2. The human body had evolved very slowly over thousand of years, always with plenty of time to adapt to environmental changes. Over the last 2 centuries, though, and especially the last 50 years, the human body has been bombarded with massive quantities of toxic substances, chemicals in our food, water, and the air we breathe. Could our immune systems possibly have dealt with that through evolution, in such a short space of time? My common sense told me no. While a virus can change rapidly, the human body cannot.

I decided to err on the side of caution and have taken a general vitamin and mineral supplement ever since. Have I benefitted from that long term use? I am certain I have, but that is not science. However, I did observe a notable drop in incidences of colds and flu. When I worked in London, I would get 7 or 8 bugs a year; that quickly dropped to 2 or three after taking the supplements, and with a faster ability to recover. That had a knock on effect of reducing incidences of iritis, which tended to follow a cold or flu when I was run down.

One thing I noticed a few years later was that two large cysts I had had since a teenager, or maybe earlier, had gone. One enormous cyst by my knee had quietly disappeared, and a smaller one on my arm too. Any connection? There is no scientific evidence that there is a connection. But those cysts were seemingly there for life, and the only change I could think of that could have made them disappear was the addition of multivitamins and minerals.

Welcome to the Health Food Harvest Blog

Every day it seems there are new reports of reputed superfoods, speculation of health benefits from "newly discovered" foods that have been around for thousands of years, and results of studies into hot topics such as red wine, broccoli, and resveratrol.

All this interest in naturally healthy foods is no bad thing, although keeping up with all the studies, and separating it from hype and speculation, can be both difficult and confusing. Who do you believe, and who don't you believe? And when? A food or drink that is bad for you one day, according to a "scientific study", may become "rich in antioxidants" the next and a great health food.

Sometimes you just have to make your own judgement and trust your instinct, or at least experiment with a superfood, or one of its components, you think may be helpful in maintaining a healthy diet. The fact that many of the recent "discoveries" have been ordinary fruits and vegetables should come as no surprise really. The most common chronic diseases in the so called First World, cancer and heart disease, are modern diseases caused by modern living, including diet.In earlier times, these diseases were not the common killers, and diets were more focused on vegetables and fruit than they are in most households today. Evidence is mounting that a lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet is one of the main causes of the modern scourge of cancer and heart problems.

That, of course, is an over simplification, but it does give an indication of why so much attention is being given to simple fruits and vegetables by scientists, sometimes with surprising results, sometimes confirming an "old wives tale", and sometimes explaining why people in a certain part of the world seem to live longer.

The new Health Food Harvest blog will try to keep up with at least some of the developments in this fascinating area of study.