>Anyone else have any suggestions for how to prevent mouth infections? I would rinse my mouth with tea made of spruce needles. It's antibacterial. Indians in Alaska and Canada, and some ethnic groups in Siberia used it to wash themselves. It was used against urinaray infections as well, and, of course, as a nourishing drink. I would also try the resin of spruce. It was chewed against bad breath and to clean the mouth. It's antibacterial too. It can be boiled to a drink. One of my female friends had urinary infection a while ago. She told me about her problem and I didn't know what to do. I wasn't thinking clearly, so we went to a doctor and he recommended some kind of medicine. Then I followed her to a pharmacy. She bought the p ills and the druggist told her to take one right away. I was sitting and waiting for her further away and didn't notice or hear what was going on. Suddenly I saw her holding a mug of water and opening the package. I woke up. "What the hell!", I thought. I rushed to her and stopped her discreetly. "Do you know the negative effects of this medicine?", I whispered. She didn't know. "The druggist is looking! I must take one!", she whispered back. "Pretend!", I said firmly. She pretended to take one pill. We went out and I took the package. I read the instructions and gave her a lecture. It was an antibiotic. There were more than 10 negative effects. Some of them pretty scary ones, at least in my opinion. "Please let's try something natural!", I begged her. I consulted a book about wild plants as food and medicine. I found what I was looking for. Then I went to the forest and picked some b ruce twigs. It was a hell of a job to pick the needles, so I decided to boiled whole twigs. The drink was extremely acrid. She didn't like it. So I took the time to pick a spoonful of needles and made a new drink using needles only. She liked it very very much. After a couple of days of picking needles, I came up with a better way of getting them of the twigs. I remembered old Christmas trees, so I dried spruce twigs in a warm (less than 50 degrees Celsius) oven. After a couple of hours I just hit the twigs and the needles fell off. I produced my friend a whole jar of spruce needles. She drank spruce needle tea several times a day, and in less than a week, she was well. She really enjoyed the drink. Fredrik