Not just for sunburns...

Hello Everyone, I feel like I have not spoken to you guys in so long! Well today I am back with a DIY recipe that you will want to learn more about.

I know that most of you, if not all have heard about and used Aloe Vera once in your life. It is commonly known to help your skin recover from a sunburn. It is sold in all stores and is a gel like consistency and originally comes from an Aloe Vera plant, where the gel comes from inside the plant's leaves. 
In my free time I love learning about nature and all of it's benefits and uses. There are so many natural alternatives for health issues etc. I was surprised to find out how many different uses Aloe Vera has. For example, it is an amazing alternative to help fight acne, if you put the gel directly onto a clean face where an acne break out is. 

One of my favorite blogs to follow is 'Free People's' blog. You may know they for the clothing store, but they also have an amazing blog that has everything from recipes to horoscopes, to finding your inner happiness (basically right up my ally). I came across this post about a DIY Aloe Vera Water. I immediately read more about it and knew I wanted to try it out myself and share it with all of you. They talked about how to make a drink made from two ingredients, water and Aloe Vera gel, that would help fight any stomach issues you may have as well as other health benefits. I wanted to try this out because I knew about the benefits Aloe Vera gel had for sunburns and acne, but I did not know you could take it internally and the internal benefits it has. On this same blog, they have a link to all of the benefits Aloe Vera gel has, but I will link it here for you all so you can find more about it.

In their recipe, they used an actual Aloe Vera plant, but I knew that there was other options instead of going out and buying a plant. So I did some research and found out that you can buy the Aloe Vera gel that is found in the leaves of the plant already packaged in a bottle ready to go. Unfortunately, you can only find this at a health food store, which the only one remotely close to me was Whole Foods. So I made the trip and picked up this bottle of Aloe Vera edible gel that was only $4.99, which is such a great deal because in the recipe you only use 2 tablespoons and in the bottle it comes with 16 Fl oz, so you really get your moneys worth. 

Below, is a picture of the ingredients you will need. I have an example of both options, the plant and the already packaged gel but you can use whichever you like. (My plant looks a little dead but the man said all you have to do is cut off the brown part of the leave and it is still good. There were about 2 good leaves on my plant. After you cut a leaf off, it will seal back up on it's own and grow another leaf.)

Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons of Aloe Vera gel
- 1 cup of water (or any other type of juice etc)
- Blender (to blend everything together, this is a must you can not 
just mix them together with a spoon)







- If you are using the plant, all you have to do is simply cut off one of the leaves and slice it right down the middle. I do not have a picture unfortunately of this step but if you go to the link for the blog I found this on they have pictures. Next, you grab a spoon and take out the clear gel making sure NOT to get the yellow substance right below the gel, but you will only get that if you scrape the spoon against the leaf extremely hard. Just gently spoon out the clear gel until you get 2 tablespoons. 

- Next, measure out 1 cup of water or any other kind of juice you would like to use. 

- Put those 2 ingredients into your blender and blend away for only a couple of seconds until they are fully mixed together which does not take long. This reason you need a blender instead of just mixing them together with a spoon, is because you want to make sure all of the Aloe Vera gel is fully combined and distributed evenly throughout the water. It may look foggy or frothy, but that is normal. Mine looked quite opaque, but it soon settles clear like normal water. 

- This step is optional, but if you do not like the taste of the plain Aloe Vera Water, you can add any kind of citrus juice you want. I added the juice of 1 lemon because I personally love anything lemon and love lemon in my normal water. It did not taste bad at all, and tasted like I was just drinking normal water! 

Also just to make sure you guys know, in the Free People's blog post, they show a picture of their drink with one of the leaves in their cup, but do NOT put one of the leaves in your cup just to make sure because there might be dangerous toxins on the outer part of the leaf. They just did it for a picture!

I hope you guys try this recipe out and I am excited to see if anything in my health changes. I will keep you guys updated and hope you have an amazing day! xoxo