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Comment by stillsut | Hacker News Reader

Supermarket aloe vera is a product that changed my life. Seriously.

With my cheap Irish skin, I'm sure to get a severe sunburn once a year. I've had one so bad it started to bleed; that one almost stopped me from going to highschool prom.

I had tried Noxzema moisturizing gel, cold shower, hot tub, and several other anecdotal remedies for sunburns, but nothing worked - for about five days following a sunburn I was basically handicapped.

A year or two after the big one I tried the [fake] aloe vera and it finally seemed like something worked. Ever since then, I'll use roughly a bottle a day of the stuff following an intense burn. This has reduced the discomfort to the level that the average Joe expresses as in "Ahh, extra sensitive right now" not "Can't put on clothes right now"

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Please just wear sunblock though. Compared to the USA I'm shocked how prevalent on these isles it is for people to just accept a big burn is obligatory on a sunny day. If you need aloe your exposure means your greatly increasing your risk of melanoma.

Sunblock?

Sure! That's why I don't get brunt everyday I'm outside between April and September.

There's some tricky failure modes to sunscreen though, and inevitably you'll find one of those failures if you expose yourself to dozen of chances for it to happen.

The absolute best sunblock is physical long sleeves, wide brim hat, tree covering.

Did it have any actual Aloe Vera in it?

Does it matter if it works? (i mean, legally, of course... and morally... ) ... but as a solution, if it works, it works, right?

Uhh, if I bought a bottle of Aloe and was smearing it all over myself, and then I was told "That's not actually aloe", I'd want to know what I was applying to my skin before I applied any more. Sure, it works, but maybe it's carcinogenic, or has a side effect that I don't want to risk, or I have an allergy to whatever mock-aloe-substitute they used.

Im in agreement... im saying if someone has been using it for years... and it works for them, they might not care whats in it...

I buy the cheapest CVS or Walgreens bottles that say "Aloe Vera [After Sun Moisturizer] ". Sometimes they're clear, sometimes green, sometimes blue. If this article is correct they probably don't have actual AV. But I'm not sure that matters, the key seems to be how quickly you get a first layer on, and how consistently throughout the next three days you baste the area affected with whatever it is I'm buying.

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