Clove Tea--delicious tea for mouth pain relief.

When I was a kid, I had a pretty bad problem with oral cankers. I can't tell you how many doctors my mom took me to about it. The advice was always the same: they're a virus, there's nothing you can do. The only relief was an expensive antiseptic spray or cough drops that taste bad and make your whole mouth uncomfortable.

But these days I go to the kitchen cupboard instead of the medicine cabinet:

Clove tea.

5-6 cloves, non-irradiated strongly preferred.
1 drinking cup of water.

Boil cloves for 5-10 minutes to desired strength. Steeping is not sufficient, cloves need to be boiled. Note: more cloves can be added for strength.

Flavor with honey or possibly lemon for a very pleasant tasting tea. Adding a little milk is nice but seems to slightly reduce the effectiveness, which can be good if you only need a mild tea.

You can make it strong enough to make your whole mouth numb but I find that a mild tea works perfectly to take the edge off any mouth pain or discomfort.

I notice the relief immediately after a few sips and by the time I slowly finish the cup, I've forgotten about the pain.

Additionally, I've read from many sources that cloves may help support a probiotic diet by killing digestive parasites. Many sources also recommend a probiotic rich diet for helping to prevent cankers. In my experience, starting to eat probiotics after the break-out does not noticeably help, but adding yogurt or kefir to my daily diet reduced the severity of outbreaks and greatly reduced recovery time.