So, I’ve been drinking Aloe Vera Juice in an attempt to speed the healing of my back; I slipped my L5S1 disc.

As I mentioned before, this juice tastes like hell. A number of folks suggested mixing it with juice but for the first week I felt like that was somehow wimping out. The Aloe is supposedly packed with so many good pharma-things that it’ll not only act as an anti-inflammatory for my back, provide needed collagen and other spine-healing elements but it’d help digestion, skin tone, make my eyes brighter and allow me to better manage a small country.

I haven’t noticed many of these benefits yet — but I have noticed that my carpal tunnel syndrome/repetitive stress disorder is not bugging me at all! Seriously, my crappy, weak and usually aching hands — so degenerated by decades of working full time on the computer, years of video gaming with hideously bad controllers and likely horrible seating and ergonomics have taken their toll. I don’t play nearly as many games as I used to as my hands just can’t do it — an hour or two of TF2 and I’m shot. Perhaps not so strangely, since starting to drink this nasty smelling and tasting juice every day — my hands hurt less. The anti-inflammatory agents must be working. A sign I might be on the right track…!

Anyways, regardless how this is helping my CTS, it still tastes like crap. I decided drinking something nasty tasting wasn’t “manning up” when I could mix it with juice. My local market had a special on some Belgian “Looza” juices so I tried their Banana Nectar and Pineapple, thinking those flavors would be strong and cover up the liquid-plumber-esque flavor of the Aloe. Banana Nectar works pretty well! I could barely notice a hint of the Aloe and mostly just got a mouthful of slushy banana-y goodness.

I’m going to keep going with the Aloe. So far my back isn’t noticeably better but nothing leads me to believe 1 week will do much. I’ve largely got the pain in my sciatic nerve to go away and now I am just haunted by worry that it’ll return and a very, very tender lower-back. I’m doing everything I can not to re-injure it and start physical therapy next week.