Using Fresh Aloe Vera Leaf to Treat Burns at Home

Aloe vera* is so easy to grow and so helpful** when you need it that having some growing somewhere in your garden or in a pot is an absolute no-brainer.  Thankfully we haven't needed it often, but the times we have needed it I've been so grateful to have fresh aloe vera leaves on hand to treat burns at home. 

Below you'll find a story, mostly told in pictures, of a nasty chemical burn and how fresh aloe vera came to the rescue***.

*Preferred Scientific Name: Aloe vera (L.) Burm.f. 

Also known as Aloe barbadensis Miller. If you want to geek out on Aloe vera's names, go here and here. 

**Aloe has a long list of uses, but I'm sticking to burns in this post.

***Please read the disclaimer at the bottom of this post. 

Get me some fresh aloe vera leaves!

Some time ago Alain encountered a chemical spill under a machine he was fixing; the result was a nasty burn on his shoulder. 

Alain is generally a stoic person, but this was intense. There's no way around it - burns are painful.

It took a few seconds for my brain to kick into gear: "Ouch. Burn. Oh boy, bad burn."

Long, painful pause, and then, "Oh, I know -- aloe vera!!" 

"KIDS!! GO GET ME SOME ALOE LEAVES!!"

(Actually, the first action should have been to run cool water on it for as long as Alain would have been willing to stand under a cool shower, but this was now several hours after the burn had happened and I wasn't sure if that was still relevant. )

So the kids came back with some aloe leaves and I got busy extracting the cooling, healing gel from inside them.

Before we go on, there is one caution to be aware of with extracting gel yourself from fresh aloe vera leaves: avoid the sap just under the skin. 

Aloe vera leaves have a thick green outer skin, then a very thin layer of bitter, sometimes yellow-ish sap, then the clear inner flesh that contains the gel. It's the flesh and gel we're after. The sap can sting or burn, so we want to avoid that. Sometimes you can see the sap just inside the skin clearly and sometimes you can't, but to be on the safe side I stay well away from the skin when I extract the gel. 

Here's how I do it.

Getting the gel out of the aloe vera leaf

Step 1 - slicing off the prickly edges of the leaf...

Next, I slice off the skin from the concave side of the leaf...

Step 3 is to lay the leaf down on a firm surface and scoop/slice the gel off. I use a spoon. With care, you can lift off a long slimy layer...

Applying the gel to the burn

The next thing is to get that slippery stuff onto the burn somehow. In this instance I laid strips of peeled aloe flesh on the burn and slid them across, leaving a layer of slime behind...

Alain found the sliding part acutely painful (which is saying quite a lot given his tolerance level) but as soon as I stopped that, the gel gave immediate relief. 

NOTE: if you can get the patient to sit or lie still in an appropriate position, a better option than what I did here is to lay the strips of aloe flesh directly on the burn and leave them undisturbed until the pain returns, then replace them with fresh ones. Continue to replace them until the pain stops. (Read more about this in the related burn story below.)

The downside of laying strips of aloe flesh on the burn is that it does require the person to be still, or for you to find a way to hold the strips in place while they move around. And you will need to change them frequently until the pain eases. 

The gel seems to form a protective film over the burn (later, I read about this and confirmed it for myself -- but I neglected to keep the link to the resource I read, and now I cant find it again. Sorry.)

Comparing the pictures below, the shine you see in the second one is the protective film. 

When the gel was completely dry, we gingerly put a clean shirt on over it. As I said, Alain is a very stoic person. Off he went, back outside to his afternoon jobs. He said the shirt was uncomfortable, but tolerable. 

Fresh aloe vera gel can facilitate rapid healing of burns

The burn happened on a Friday. We applied aloe gel for the first time that afternoon, then repeated it 3 times per day over the weekend. The result was really rather amazing. This is what it looked like on Sunday afternoon

Once the work week started again, the aloe vera applications dropped to once per day. This is what the burn looked like on the following Wednesday afternoon... 

And on the following Sunday, 9 days after the burn occurred... 

Fears and doubts...

I'm not gonna lie. As much as I advocate for building self-reliance, re-learning what our grandparents knew about home health care, and turning first to what's in your kitchen, your garden, and your neighbourhood rather than to pharmaceuticals, I had doubts when I saw this burn.  

I feared that A, I wouldn't be able to keep it clean enough and there would be a risk of infection, and that B, we would need high tech dressings to keep it comfortable.

Thankfully, I was wrong on both counts. A foundation of good health, basic hygiene, and a willingness to have a go at taking care of it ourselves paid off.

There are also herbs that would have protected against infection, or countered it if it started, but thankfully we didn't have to go there. As you can see from the pictures, the burn healed rapidly and without complications. 

Another aloe vera burn healing story

This is the second significant burn we've treated at home like this. The other one happened years ago - I was pouring rendered fat into a glass jar that broke, sending hot fat sploshing all over the counter top and onto my upper legs. (Since then, when pouring hot fat into jars, I place the jar inside a stainless steel bowl or in the sink - so if the jar cracks the fat can't go anywhere. Duh.)

On that occasion I sat outside the back door running cool water from the garden hose onto my upper legs. I sat there for a long time, because whenever I stopped the water, the pain started -- and it was intense.

When it got dark and too cold to continue the running water, I came inside and laid peeled strips of aloe vera flesh on the burns, which I found (to my great relief) was as cooling and soothing as the water had been (in hindsight I could have done this a lot sooner).

I left the strips lying in place until they were no longer giving relief (it felt as if the aloe strips were pulling heat out of my legs and once they were all warmed up, the pain would come back), and kept replacing them with fresh ones until the pain stayed away when I removed them.

Over the following days I kept applying aloe vera gel several times per day and those large, dramatic burns on the fronts of my thighs first blistered dramatically, then healed quickly and with no scarring.

Serious burns are serious business - don't take them lightly

Serious burns are serious business for a range of reasons, including the risk of unseen damage below the skin layers, the risk of infection, and the risk of severe scarring that may limit movement after healing.

As you know, medical professionals grade burns and call them first, second, third, or even fourth degree burns depending on their severity -- and these grades can be difficult to judge and may change as time progresses after the burn occurs. So don't treat large or severe burns lightly. 

Only you can decide if/when you need to reach out to the professionals -- and yes, I wrote a disclaimer for this post, which you can read below if that's your jam. 

High tech medicine vs home-based medicine

Modern medicine can save lives and repair broken bodies when there's been an acute crisis. 

But to build or restore a deep, abiding foundation of health, you need a simpler, slower, deeper, close-to-home kind of medicine.

It's been estimated that over 90% of healthcare given world wide is given by women in their own homes, with the use of what we might call "kitchen remedies."¹

Home-based medicine is the remedies of mamas and papas and community healers, passed down by grandparents or preserved in books and websites, remedies we can use to care for ourselves and each other within the home and within the local biome and ecosystem.

Kitchen remedies don't look like medicine if we've been conditioned to think of "medicine" as coming from a pill, capsule, or syringe; as being administered by doctors who know better than we do because of their education and qualifications²; and as being fast, dramatic and "drug-like" in its effect.

Home remedies fit in with the Permaculture principle of "use small and slow solutions" - they're small scale and they may work slowly (although I've also experienced and seen rapid responses to simple medicines). 

Home remedies are super-local, unique to the place and the family/community. They are not profitable. And they do no harm; there are no side effects except positive ones.

In my opinion, home remedies also might include things like rest, safety and security, optimum nutrition, and warm, caring relationships.

I guess my point is that while home-based health care may directly address a specific injury or illness, it does so without undermining health. It builds overall health by nourishing and caring for body, mind, and spirit, and by simultaneously tending to the relationships and the web of life that sustains us.

More posts that explore this topic of "high tech vs home-based medicine"

"The Dominant Healthcare Approach vs Marginalized Alternatives"

"Two Different Kinds of Healthcare - Part 1"

"Two Different Kinds of Healthcare - Part 2"

"Let's Choose a More Empowering Story"

"The People's Medicine"

"Expanding on the Grandmother Effect"

Disclaimer

I know. I agree. I hold space in my mind and heart for the possibility of a world in which we wouldn't have to write disclaimers for everything. 

But for now, here it is:

Use this information and these ideas at your own risk. Do your own research. You are most welcome to use my stories as part of your research and decision making process, AND I take no responsibility for the results of your choices and your actions or inaction.

Which leads me to comment, lastly, on risk taking...

On risk taking

In a recent post on their travels, Patrick and Meg of Artist as Family wrote,

I completely agree. I think a little self-reliance and risk-taking build our capacity to make wiser choices, to be more effective decision makers, and to live in more values-based ways.