Dear Friends,
In this letter, we’re going to review the main ways Aloe vera can help digestion and gut health.
Aloe vera is one of the top botanicals used in supplements – as well as being a popular ingredient in topical and skin care products – and can help the body in numerous ways, with gut health being a popular reason why many consumers take Aloe vera supplements.
I believe there are 3 main ways that Aloe vera supplements may help digestive and gut health.
Others may point to additional gut health benefits, but candidly, the science has been inconsistent in some of these other areas to date, and we feel it’s best to focus on the benefits with reliable data.
Balance Stomach Acid Levels
Stomach acid often gets a bad rap, but it’s an integral part of a healthy digestion system.
Adequate levels of stomach acid are needed to breakdown foods and prepare nutrients for absorption in the intestines.
If this doesn’t happen because too little stomach acid is available, then it disrupts the rest of the digestive process – and this can contribute to a lot of health problems.
On the other hand, too much stomach acid is bad too. Excess stomach acid can lead to occasional heartburn or indigestion and may damage the stomach lining.
Like so many things in the body, balance is key, and maintaining a healthy level of stomach acid is an area where Aloe vera can lend a helping hand.
As a result of this support, Aloe vera also has been shown to help relieve occasional heartburn, gas, and belching, and may have a soothing and protective effect on the stomach and gastrointestinal lining.
Support Vitamin Absorption and Bioavailability
Research also indicates that Aloe vera may help improve the absorption and bioavailability in the bloodstream of certain key vitamins and nutrients.
For example, in a study published in the journal Phytomedicine, researchers compared taking vitamin C and vitamin E, with and without Aloe vera in healthy adults between the ages 21 and 42 years old.
The researchers monitored blood levels of vitamin C and vitamin E in the study participants for 24 hours after consumption and found that when Aloe vera was consumed with the vitamins, there was significantly higher amounts of vitamin C and vitamin E in the bloodstream over and at the end of the 24-hour study period.
This suggests that Aloe vera may help us digest and absorb these nutrients more efficiently and can help improve bioavailability in the bloodstream.
When we refer to bioavailability, it means the amount of a nutrient that’s available for our bodies to use, and there was a significant positive effect on vitamin E and vitamin C when taken with Aloe vera in this study.
One of the interesting takeaways from this study is vitamin C is a water-soluble nutrient, whereas vitamin E is fat-soluble.
Our digestive systems are water-based, so our bodies need to do some extra preparation work to absorb fat soluble nutrients.
Nonetheless, Aloe vera had a positive effect on both the water-soluble vitamin C and fat-soluble vitamin E, which I thought was an interesting and important finding.
Vitamin B12 Support Also
Another similar study was published by researchers from the University of California, Davis, who investigated the effects of taking Aloe vera with vitamin C and vitamin B12.
As you may know, vitamin B12 is typically not absorbed well, which makes it a good choice to investigate to see if Aloe vera can help.
The participants in this study were healthy adults between the ages of 40 and 70 years old.
Like in the first study, significant improvements were seen in blood levels of vitamin C and vitamin B12 when Aloe vera was consumed with these vitamins.
Now, this study used a 150mg serving size of Aloe vera, versus the 300mg of Aloe vera used in the first study.
So while the vitamin C improvement was still significant with 150mg, it wasn’t as strong as with the improvement seen with the 300mg in the first study.
For vitamin B12, the improvement with 150mg of Aloe vera was very noticeable in the first few hours after ingestion, and then leveled off afterwards.
It would be interesting to see if 300mg of Aloe would make an even greater impact with vitamin B12, but we don’t have that data yet.
We’re often asked, “when should I take my Aloe vera supplement?”.
Based on these studies, we suggest taking Aloe vera with vitamin supplements or food. It can be a nice way to get the most from the vitamins you ingest.
Prebiotic & Intestinal Support
If you’ve had a chance to explore the health benefits of Aloe vera before, you may know that a key class of nutrients in the gel of the plant are polysaccharides.
These are essentially complex carbohydrates that are not broken down by the body during digestion.
Like other complex carbohydrates, Aloe vera polysaccharides have prebiotic activity, meaning they provide nourishment for friendly bacteria in the gut, also referred to as probiotic bacteria.
In other words, they act as food for good bacteria, allowing them to flourish and grow in the intestines, which is key for good gut and overall health.
In addition, Aloe vera may help support the function of the intestinal barrier, which helps keep unwanted substances out of the bloodstream.
And finally, Aloe vera may help your body form better stools in the intestines, for example, by increasing the water holding characteristics of the stool, which can help support healthy and more comfortable bowel movements.
So those are the 3 main gut health benefits of Aloe vera – helping to balance stomach acid, supporting nutrient absorption, and promoting prebiotic activity and intestinal health in the gut.
Now the key to experiencing these benefits is using high quality and “real” Aloe vera.
So in next week’s letter, I’m going to tell you what to look for in a quality Aloe vera supplement.
This is a big deal, because historically Aloe vera has been one of the most counterfeited and adulterated botanicals in the marketplace.
Unfortunately it’s not uncommon for some consumers to try Aloe vera and believe it doesn’t work, when in reality they were taking a product that wasn’t made with real Aloe, or it was such subpar quality, it couldn’t possibly work.
Next week, I’ll show you how to avoid getting ripped off when choosing an Aloe vera supplement.
In the meantime, if you want to find out more about Aloe vera supplements, you can check out the TrueAloe and AloeCran product pages.
Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
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