Jason Aloe Vera 98% Moisturizing Gel

Failure to apply enough waterproof sunscreen to my face on the snowy alpine slopes on Mt Rainier, caused my entire face skin surface to burn off! A horrible highly uncomfortable recovery process and my face appearance was saved by this little tube of Aloe Vera gel. I bow down in homage to the cactus spirits that save me!

-- Review in Progress -- please check back shortly! --

On a hike on Mt Rainier, Wash., to Camp Muir at 10,000', it looked like my one HEAVY application of "WATERPROOF" 60+ sunscreen sweated off or got rubbed off my face! Turns out high UV light exposure over time also destroys the pigment that protects us, thus you have to reapply as the label says to protect yourself.  

The result was that my face skin totally burned! A couple days later ALL of it peeled off, and more than one layer deep I think?! Bummer! This resulted in a shocking experience and really horrible uncomfortable feeling. 

Imagine your whole face oozing, feeling chilled, and being afraid to wet or touch the sensitive mess with anything. Imagine it being Sunday and you need to go to work the next day! I didn't imagine, I lived it. 

What happened next was due to training, being around an experienced outdoors person (my Fiancé at the time, now Wife), and some pure blind on my part luck. My Fiancé had the exact tube of Aloe Gel pictured below on the shelf. 

Aloe Vera Gel ...

Ah yes, I'd heard a lot about it, and all so far has sounded good. Sometimes you CAN believe what you hear and read, other times not. I was desperately at the point of needing to believe in something. I really needed it to work NOW!

The label said 98% Aloe Vera, 100% vegetarian, and a list of other good things. I just prayed that the penetrating part wasn't going to hurt. This is because my normal face surface was gone and was anything but normal! Thus, I either needed to luck out big time or go to the clinic immediately!

I knew Aloe Vera was supposed to be healing for burns. And the tube said it was cooling and soothing, which sounded REALLY attractive at the time. So I risked putting the gel on small patch of skin, at the edge of the burn. Still not inflamming, but instead cooling the burn still for an hour or two, unlike about everything else I could try, I boldly decided to trust it, and basted the rest of the face. 

The label read right for my face use, and it looks like it has many other skin uses too! I can verify that there can be total life-changing magic in that Aloe gel! 

We now grow a live plant, which family tells me is even better! Yes, the gel had immediately cooled and soothed! However, a totally unexpected gift was that the gel basting also dried down on my face sealing it! And it created a natural looking flexible 'skin-like' skin! As long as I didn't get the gel wet, it stayed in place just like skin. My face stopped chilling and oozing, allowing me to finally come out of emergency mode and relax, and go to work. 

It said right there on the label to put it on my face, and my remaining face was indeed tender (but not dry)!

Within a week, new face skin had come in under the gel! Soon one couldn't tell that anything ever happened. However, I will still now watch out for skin cancer there for the the rest of my life, and I will always now try to use sunscreen correctly. 

The take home lessons here are:

• To apply a quality sunscreen. 
• Reapply it every few hours like the label says!  
• AND to keep some Aloe Vera gel on hand, because I know that I will get my skin burned again (or scraped or dry).

Thus, we keep both the live plant and a travel tube of gel on hand. With the plant, I'm told one just needs to break open the leaf and rub some sap directly on the challenged spot. It supplies the gel healing effect and is supposed to be even more capable of stopping skin infections than processed gel! The literature suggests that it is side microbial infections that normally slows down the healing without an anti-microbial such, such as Aloe Vera.

Lesson taken? If it can help you, I hope so. I never want anyone else to experience what I did.  And the reader now has one tested treatment plan to try or share, WHEN someone else gets burned.