# Survival > Foraging & Wild Edibles >  pine needle tea

## wareagle69

so i always wonder when reading a book or a thread on the net where it talks about pine needle tea being a tasty refreshing bush tea, i'll agree with healthy but tasty, hmm been drinking balsam tea past couple of days, tastes like a christmas tree to me, love the smell just not the taste worse with honey in it, like coffee i am sure it is an aquired taste, but i like blueberry or sweetgale better, was planing on some dried sweet fern tonight but am out of cheesecloth and coffee filters so that will have to wait until tommorrow, oh yeah what i was wondering was, how many authors that write about this stuff actually have partaken in said beverages

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## hunter63

I would imagine that there is a difference between "having to drink it" and "wanting to drink it"
All they are trying to tell you that it won't kill you, (at least right away).
Used to wonder about all that stuff myself, you know the Euell Gibbons "wild foods".

I think Bear Grylls as well as Les both made that drink some on one of their "adventures"
Keep up the good work, so we will all know what to try.

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## canid

no, some people actually like it. not me, too much, but i can live with it.

beats gum/eucalyptus, as wild teas go, but i prefer blackberry, chickory, spearmint, nettle, etc.

to each, indeed their own.

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## preachtheWORD

I've had pine needle tea ... and it tastes like pine needles.  If you've ever managed to get pine rosin in your mouth, that's pretty much what the tea is like.
If you add some fresh birch twigs it becomes MUCH more palatable.  I used black birch - I don't if other birches have that natural minty flavor.

Bottom line - pine needle tea is better than drinking plain hot water, but it sure isn't anything to sing about by itself.

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## Old GI

> I've had pine needle tea ... and it tastes like pine needles.  If you've ever managed to get pine rosin in your mouth, that's pretty much what the tea is like.
> If you add some fresh birch twigs it becomes MUCH more palatable.  I used black birch - I don't if other birches have that natural minty flavor.
> 
> Bottom line - pine needle tea is better than drinking plain hot water, but it sure isn't anything to sing about by itself.


Wish I had known that in 1978 when I had to drink a lot of it.

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## Tootsiepop254

Sounds nasty to me.  This is actually healthy?

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## canid

in some areas, during winter months, this is one of the only source of chlorophy and plant vitamins traditionally available. it's chock full of those [and pine resin].

if you don't go overboard with it, it's not bad, it's just not particularly my... cup of tea.

i have big folger's canisters full of slow dried garden greens, like mustard. it's another good [and lightweight] way of keeping greens in the winter, though i don't exactly _need_ to store them around here.

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## Rick

You guys are a bunch of sissies. I happen to like tea from white pine (Pinus strobus). It really has a "clean" taste. I don't know how to describe it other than that. If you try spruce of some of the other pines then I do agree with the pine taste but white pine is different. 

I generally don't break or cut the needles up but just drop them in hot, not boiling, water for 5 minutes. Then take them out. I think it's pretty refreshing.

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## canid

i said i like it alight, just not a lot.

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## Rick

Oooooh. Huh?

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## Old GI

> You guys are a bunch of sissies. I happen to like tea from white pine (Pinus strobus). It really has a "clean" taste. I don't know how to describe it other than that. If you try spruce of some of the other pines then I do agree with the pine taste but white pine is different. 
> 
> I generally don't break or cut the needles up but just drop them in hot, not boiling, water for 5 minutes. Then take them out. I think it's pretty refreshing.


Well, that explains it.

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## Tootsiepop254

Now I need to find a white pine and try this...

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## canid

any pine. you can do the same with fir aswell, and probably many others.

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## Tootsiepop254

How is it made? Just add the needles to boiling water?

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## oly

> Sounds nasty to me.  This is actually healthy?


Hasn't anyone told you that if it tastes good, it is bad for you? and if it tastes bad them its good for you?

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## Tootsiepop254

Nope.  That's why I'm so round.

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## crashdive123

> How is it made? Just add the needles to boiling water?


Opinions vary.  Probably best to find out what works for you.  I have chopped the needles a bit and steeped them for about 10 minutes.  Not something I want to drink a gallon of, but a good source of vitamins.  I have also put them in boiling water unchopped.  The taste was lighter.  Letting it cool and drinking as a cold drink - not too bad at all.  All a matter of personal taste.

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## oly

> Nope.  That's why I'm so round.


Glacier lily is sweet in the spring time, but you must positively identify the plant first

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## Rick

Any time you make a light tea (such as pine) it's best to use water that is less than boiling. About 185F. And only let it steep about 4-5 minutes. Otherwise, the tea will turn bitter because you are leaching too much out of the "leaf". A very dark tea can be steeped in boiling water. 

Where's Winnie? I'll bet she can tell us how to make tea! 

As for finding White Pine, you can't mistake it. The needles are in bundles of 5. It's easy peasy. I like blue spruce pretty well, too. It has a much stronger flavor but the danged needles are as sharp as stick pins. Not worth that much trouble.

EDIT: Oops. I had to edit the temp.

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## crashdive123

She's probably still in France.  I'll bet wine tasting has been added to her repertoire.

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## Rick

I sure hope she doesn't get ineb....eneb...drunk as a sock.

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## catfish10101

The word is eeneebreeated. LOL!!!

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## crashdive123

> The word is eeneebreeated. LOL!!!


The last time I did that I was not as drunk as some tinkle might peep.

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## Rick

Did you say....tinkle? 

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## postman

Kinda like the taste myself, especially balsam fir. Also has good medicinal properties, and the sap makes great wound dressing as well as fire starter. Must be a Canadian thing.

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## crashdive123

Hey there Postman.  Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night should keep you from stopping by the Introduction section and tell us a bit about yourself.  Thanks.  http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...splay.php?f=14

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## Rockgod1619

I personally love pine needle tea.  It tastes good to me, and the health benefits are great!  However, make sure you don't take needles from the yew tree.  It's poisonous.  Just my $0.02.

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## Old GI

Oh, you're supposed to take the needles out, not .......  :Blushing: ???

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## walkabout king

White pine, not bad... Longleaf pines from FL... Just flat out pine-sol. Hence the reason if I do drink it, it never gets cut or broken, and I typically prefer it cold with a sweeter plant in there with it.

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## Winnie

> I sure hope she doesn't get ineb....eneb...drunk as a sock.


Just seen this and I resemble that remark! I'll have you know my week in France was a purely fact-finding and educational tour of the regional differences in French wine.
I didn't get guttered once. It was at least 5 times :Innocent: 

As for tea, fruit teas good, raspberry leaf tea really good, blackberry leaf tea good, tea, tea essential to life. Pine needle tea? doesn't sound like my cup of tea :Smile:

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## Rick

Ooh. Try it. You will like it. It leaves a very clean taste in your mouth. Tops on my list. Tons of Vitamin C, too.

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## redwoodfox

i agree, not a very tasty drink. I've drank it a couple times, but its one of those things i'll add to the knowledge vault. If i'm ever in a survival sitiuation and need a hot drink, then i'll use it.

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## Stroover

Man! I don't think you guys are making it correctly. If you only boil it for a few minutes, then ya, it's more of an acquired taste. You're supposed to bring it to a boil and then let it simmer until it turns reddish. That's when it's good, and does not taste anything like the sappy taste many of you have described. For it to turn reddish, it can take anywhere from an hour to over-night (just keep adding water). Mind you, you will have a much lower vitamin C content in the reddish stage, but still lots of it. I find that in the pre-red stage there is TOO much vitamin C for my liking, so I redden it. Everybody who tries it that way say it's quite good.

On a side note, 5 years ago I decided to go the natural route and stopped taking flue shots. I drink a cup or two of this every day, and have not gotten a cold or flue since. I live in north-eastern Canada where colds and flu are as common as snow, just so ya know.

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## crashdive123

Hey Stroover - how about simmering on over to the Introduction section and tell us a bit about yourself.  Thanks.  http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...splay.php?f=14

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## Rick

> 5 years ago I decided to go the natural route


And what was the natural route...oh yea, death.

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## Stroover

> And what was the natural route...oh yea, death.


Rick, are you sure you want to be in a "survivalist" forum? Or do you consider "surviving" to be part of the modern world ways? As a matter of fact, if most are of your opinion, I think I'M in the wrong forum.  :Online2long:

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## Rick

Chill. It's called pulling your chain. Banter. We do that around here. If you can't survive the forum you certainly won't survive out there. See how that works?

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## oneraindog

> Mind you, you will have a much lower vitamin C content in the reddish stage


i dont know will you have ANY vitamin c? i was under the impression that vit C is destroyed at a certain temperature. not SOME OF it but all of it so you dont want to cook anything for vitamin c benefit for too long on too high heat.

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## Stroover

> i dont know will you have ANY vitamin c? i was under the impression that vit C is destroyed at a certain temperature. not SOME OF it but all of it so you dont want to cook anything for vitamin c benefit for too long on too high heat.


Then how do you explain how the native people saved Champlain's settlement in 1604 from all dying of scurvy by showing them how to make pine needle tea on St-Croix Island between New Brunswick and Maine? It was their *only* source of vitamin C at the time during winter months. By the time the native people showed up, over half of the settlers had died of scurvy. The rest learned how to make the tea by "boiling pine needles in water" and they managed to survive the rest of the winter. Explain that...

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## Rick

Well, not entirely true. The inner bark of the Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) is also loaded with Vitamin C and quite edible. The indigenous folks were often called "bark eaters" by early explorers because it was a very common part of their diet. I don't doubt that tea was a source of their Vitamin C as well but the largest portion came from actually eating the inner bark or Phloem of the tree.

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## rwc1969

They may not have actually boiled it. Just because a book or something says so don't mean it happened. A lot gets lost in 400 plus years of handed down second hand info.

Heat destroys vitamin C as well as amino acids, enzymes and such. I bring my water to a boil and then remove from heat and add ingredients. The water is then hot enough to easily draw out the nutrients, but it doesn't destroy essential vitamins and such. I do this with Chaga and sumac.

also, with some things boiling will allow the tannins to leach out causing a bitter taste.

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## crashdive123

Not sure if it was their only source of vitamin C, but maybe their most abundant source.  




> Recent observations suggest that the impact of temperature and cooking on vitamin C may have been overestimated:
> 1.	Since it is water soluble, vitamin C will strongly leach into the cooking water while cooking most vegetables — but this doesn't necessarily mean the vitamin is destroyed — it's still there, but it's in the cooking water. (This may also suggest how the apparent misconception about the extent to which boiling temperatures destroy vitamin C might have been the result of flawed research: If the vitamin C content of vegetables (and not of the water) was measured subsequent to cooking them, then that content would have been much lower, though the vitamin has not actually been destroyed.)
> 2.	Not only the temperature, but also the exposure time is significant. Contrary to what was previously and is still commonly assumed, it can take much longer than two or three minutes to destroy vitamin C at boiling point.


Source:  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Metabol...tion/Vitamin_C

Edit:  Note the two table in the article for plant and animal sources of vitamin C.

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## Ken

Here's a great source of Vitamin C. And as the name suggests, it is a multi-use item as well.  

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## Stroover

> Well, not entirely true. The inner bark of the Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) is also loaded with Vitamin C and quite edible. The indigenous folks were often called "bark eaters" by early explorers because it was a very common part of their diet. I don't doubt that tea was a source of their Vitamin C as well but the largest portion came from actually eating the inner bark or Phloem of the tree.


Yes Rick, but we're not talking about the Adirondacks (or bark eaters), we're talking about the Maliceet who showed the Europeans how to make tea out of pine needles which ultimately saved the remainding colonists from dying of scurvy.

Getting back to the person who claims that all of the vitamin c is killed by cooking: Then that means you get no vitamins from cooking your food? Therefore you must eat everything raw? Not that there's anything wrong with that. I eat plenty of food raw, especially fish. Mmmmm!

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## rwc1969

Raw peaches have a huge amount of vitamin C. Look on a can of cooked peaches and see how much vitamin C is listed. VERY LITTLE!

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## Stroover

> Raw peaches have a huge amount of vitamin C. Look on a can of cooked peaches and see how much vitamin C is listed. VERY LITTLE!


Then I guess a little goes a long way, huh?

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## wildWoman

I find rosehips a much tastier source of Vitamin C than pine needles and bark...but tastes differ.

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## rwc1969

I just found out that Autumn olives are edible and contain several vitamins including C along with more lycopenes per berry than an average sized tomato.

I had some rosehips the other day and they were really sweet.

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## Rick

> I find rosehips a much tastier source of Vitamin C than pine needles and bark...but tastes differ.


Indeed. I find rosehips pretty yucky.

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## Stroover

> Indeed. I find rosehips pretty yucky.



Wow! I actually agree with Rick on something!  :Tongue Smilie:

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## Old GI

Pine needle tea was sure appreciated in freezing rain. :Drool:

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## Batch

> Raw peaches have a huge amount of vitamin C. Look on a can of cooked peaches and see how much vitamin C is listed. VERY LITTLE!


 A quick google said that a serving of raw peach gives you 19% RDA and canned peaches give you 12%. Seems that the difference is in the canning fluid according to them. But, I'd bet some of it is lost because canned peaches are usually peeled and raw peaches aren't...

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## Rick

> Wow! I actually agree with Rick on something!


That sounded almost reasonable. I guess it's time to up my medication.

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## Ken

> Well, not entirely true. The inner bark of the Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) is also loaded with Vitamin C and quite edible. The indigenous folks were often called "bark eaters" by early explorers because it was a very common part of their diet. I don't doubt that tea was a source of their Vitamin C as well but the largest portion came from actually eating the inner bark or Phloem of the tree.


*Did You Ever Eat a Pine Tree?*

by Euell Gibbons
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In the trunk of a large tree the only living part is some layers of live cells outside the wood proper and inside the bark-called the sapwood, the cambium, and the inner bark. All these layers put together may be only a fraction of an inch thick. 

The living layers of cambium and inner bark on many kinds of trees have often been used in medicine, in home remedies, and even as a source of food. In 1732, when Linnaeus, the father of modern botany, was tramping through the Lapland, he reported that the Lapps were largely subsisting on "fir bark." This was from the tree known to us as Scotch pine. 

The Lapps removed the brown outer layer and hung the strips of white inner bark under the eaves of their barns to dry. If food was plentiful the next winter, this bark was fed to their dogs and cattle, and was reported to be very fattening, but if other foods were scarce, the Lapps would grind this dried bark and make a famine bread of it, which was very nutritious, but, to Linnaeus's taste, not very palatable.

It is not usually realized how much the American Indians formerly depended on tree barks for food. The eastern Indians favored the barks from the pine family, especially that from the white pine, although the inner barks of other trees, such as black birch and slippery elm, were relished.

The eastern white pine is one of the largest forest trees found from Canada south to Georgia and west to Iowa. The bark is greenish and smooth on young trees, becoming brown and furrowed on large, old ones. The needles are a grayish blue-green in color, soft and flexible with no prickles or points, three to five inches long, growing five in a cluster Ü a valuable recognition feature.

*Fresh From Your Local Sawmill*
I had no trouble finding white pine bark with which to experiment. I simply inquired at a country sawmill where white pine had been recently cut, drove where they directed me, and peeled the bark from the stumps. The inner bark must be separated from the dry, outer bark. I tried boiling this fresh inner bark as the Indians did, and it reduced to a glutinous mass from which the more bothersome wood fibers were easily removed. I'm sure it was wholesome and nutritious, but in the area of palatability it left much to be desired. It is said that the Indians cooked this bark with meat so I tried boiling some with beef, but when I tasted it I felt that instead of making the bark edible I had merely ruined a good piece of beef.

I imagine that one who grew up eating this food, as the Indian children did, would find it good.

I wanted some dried bark for herbal remedies and further food experiments, so I hung some of my strips of white pine bark in a warm attic room until it was thoroughly dry. It still wouldn't grind very well, so I gave it an additional drying in an oven with the door propped slightly open so moisture could escape. The heat caused the bark to swell slightly, and it became a great deal more friable and grindable. The redried bark was cut into small pieces with a hatchet, and ground, about a cupful at a time, in the electric blender. Most recipes for home remedies made of this inner bark call for coarsely ground bark, so I put the pulverized bark through a flour sifter, using the fine part that passed through the sieve for food experiments and the coarser stuff for cough syrup.

The fine powder was a weak yellowish-orange color with a slight odor of turpentine and a taste that was at first very sweet and mucilaginous, but was quickly followed by a disagreeable bitterness and astringency. There is no doubt about this material's being nutritious. It contains sugar and starch, and, according to two U.S. Government sources, it is rich in vitamin C.

I hoped the bitterness and astringency would disappear on cooking but, alas, these tastes are very persistent, and I can't say that the bread I made with it was an unqualified success. I mixed the fine powder half-and-half with wheat flour and followed a recipe for yeast-raised rolls. They were of good texture and perfectly edible, but they also had a disagreeable bitter taste and more than a hint of turpentine flavor about them, and I felt the rolls would have been better without the white pine flour.

Dried white pine bark is still a valuable ingredient in cough remedies. Its medicinal properties are expectorant and diuretic. It is most often prescribed in the title role of Compound White Pine Syrup. This is a real herbal mixture and a good illustration of the fact that modern medicine does not disdain herbal remedies if they are effective.

*Candied White Pine*
New Englanders formerly candied the peeled new shoots of white pine, gathered before they became woody. I tried some of these peeled tender shoots, boiling them until tender, draining off that cooking water and then boiling them for 20 minutes in a syrup made of equal parts of sugar and water. The syrup was then drained off, and the candied shoots were partly dried, then rolled in granulated sugar.

This tasted a little more civilized than the foods I had been trying, but even this candy was nothing about which I could get very excited. I would have considered it a pretty good tasting cough medicine, and it would probably help control a cough, but I'm sure I have eaten much better confections.

White pine needles have been tested for nutritional benefits, and they have good yields of vitamin A and about 5 times as much vitamin C as found in lemons. Had those old-timers who used to suffer from scurvy every winter when fresh vegetables were unavailable used an infusion of white pine needles instead of tea or coffee, they would never have been touched by scurvy.

*Pine Needle Tea*Pine Needle Tea, made by pouring 1 pint of boiling water over 1 ounce of fresh white pine needles chopped fine, is about the most palatable pine product I have tasted. With a squeeze of lemon and a little sugar it is almost enjoyable, and it gives a great feeling of virtue to know that as you drink it you are fortifying your body with two essential vitamins in which most modern diets are deficient.

I have high respect for the medicinal and nutritional properties of white pine products, but you must have gathered by now that I care very little for their taste. Nevertheless, the economic hazards of writing for a living being what they are, I intend to bear in mind that these lordly trees can furnish substantial and nutritious, if somewhat ill-tasting, food in times of need, but the emergency will have to be pretty dire before I consume any large quantity of it. My current taste in food-gathering poses no threat of extinction to the white pine.

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## rwc1969

> A quick google said that a serving of raw peach gives you 19% RDA and canned peaches give you 12%. Seems that the difference is in the canning fluid according to them. But, I'd bet some of it is lost because canned peaches are usually peeled and raw peaches aren't...


A lot of nutrients are in the skins of most veggies and fruits. But, those numbers are surprising! I googled it and came up with 10% for raw vs. 5% to 90% for canned per 1/2 cup. But, it also depends if they used ascorbic acid, citric acid/ vitamin C as a preservative or not. All the ones I've seen do and that's where most if not all the vitamin C comes from in modern preserved food. I have a can of peaches right here and it says 2% per 1/2 cup, Del Monte and on their website it states 20-90%. Confusing!

When I was in school and even after into the 90's it was published somewhere that a peach has 400% of your daily Vitamin C. It was stated that a 1/4 peach would give you 100% of your RDA of Vit. C. After searching on the net I can't find those numbers. Maybe the orange growers paid google to have them removed. LOL! Or maybe the peach growers didn't! 

Unfortunately, I trust online figures less and less each day as they seem to vary greatly and there is a lot of $$ influencing search results these days as well. Too much bias, IMO, with all numbers generated these days! It all depends on who's paying for the research.

I know they did a recent study that suggests quick cooking/ blanching, doesn't take away the vitamin C as much as they thought, but it certainly does take it away as well as kill all the enzymes in the food we eat. Of course that study was probably paid for by the Canners of America or something. LOL!

I'll stick to not adding my foods to boiling water if I can at all help it and cooking them as little as possible.

I know there is a huge amount of research on Chaga and it is overwhelmingly agreed that if you boil it most of the medicinal/ nutritional benefit is lost. You can boil the water first, but the Chaga, etc. shouldn't be added until the water is under 180 or so Farenhiet. But, it is also agreed that native people who originally used it most likely boiled it over an open fire on hunting trips and such. Of course they didn't really know what the benefits were they just drank it because they liked it.

I had no idea, but there is actually an International Scurvy Awareness Day. http://www.limestrong.com/nutrition.htm

Rose hips rate pretty high on their list and interestingly enough the Canadian RDA is about half of what the USA is. They didn't list pine needles. :Sneaky2: 

According to them you may only need 5-7 mg of Vit. C to prevent scurvy and your liver will provide enough on it's own for 3 or so months. So, unless your stuck in the wilderness for a long time with absolutely no source of vit. C it's probably not even an issue in the first place.

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## Stroover

Thanks for the read, Ken. I had never tried the bark, but have been considering it for a while. I'm still waiting to come accross a relatively freshly fallen pine tree to try (cutting the bark from a live tree will kill it, as you all know), although now I know it will be nasty tasting so I won't get my hopes up for nothing.  
As for the needles, I have tried steeping (or decocting), lightly boiling, and boiling for a long time.  My personal results were that decocting had little to no taste, and the "pee test" yeilded unnoticable results. Lightly boiling had the highest results but didn't tast as good as the lenghty boil which in the pee test yeilded better results than decocting, but less then slightly boiling (for like 15 minutes of boiling time).
 FYI: the pee test is simply the more vitamin C content is in your body, the more your pee will be kind of neon clear yellow, almost nuclear looking. After drinking about three cups of the 15-minute boiled pine needle tea during the course of three days, the pee was the "nucleariest" I had ever seen it! I realized I was pumping too much vitamin C into my body, so I cut it down to one cup per day.  

Somebody mentionned chaga a few posts back: I have been using chaga for almost two years now. Like they said, steeping yeilds the best results medicinally speaking, but powdering it first then boiling it for about fifteen minutes makes it taste a lot like coffee and is fantastic! although I know it loses most if not all of its medicinal properties.

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## Batch

I have been told that if your pee is any color but clear that you are dehydrated. I keep my urine clear and if it has a tinge of yellow I drink more water.

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## wildWoman

> Indeed. I find rosehips pretty yucky.


...what I said - tastes differ. But we can be on the same survival team then! You'll be chewing on the trees, I go after the rosehips.

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## Rick

I don't like Phloem, either. I'll go for the Moose steaks. That should work out well for everyone.

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## wareagle69

> Man! I don't think you guys are making it correctly. If you only boil it for a few minutes, then ya, it's more of an acquired taste. You're supposed to bring it to a boil and then let it simmer until it turns reddish. That's when it's good, and does not taste anything like the sappy taste many of you have described. For it to turn reddish, it can take anywhere from an hour to over-night (just keep adding water). Mind you, you will have a much lower vitamin C content in the reddish stage, but still lots of it. I find that in the pre-red stage there is TOO much vitamin C for my liking, so I redden it. Everybody who tries it that way say it's quite good.
> 
> On a side note, 5 years ago I decided to go the natural route and stopped taking flue shots. I drink a cup or two of this every day, and have not gotten a cold or flue since. I live in north-eastern Canada where colds and flu are as common as snow, just so ya know.


not sure how much you have actually done this or just read about it, but from my own experience boiling the needles just releases the sap and crap(turpentine0 from the needles which gives it the terrible taste, we have found that brining your water to a boil then adding the needles once removed from heat source and then letting steep for a bit is for us the best method

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## Stroover

> not sure how much you have actually done this or just read about it, but from my own experience boiling the needles just releases the sap and crap(turpentine0 from the needles which gives it the terrible taste, we have found that brining your water to a boil then adding the needles once removed from heat source and then letting steep for a bit is for us the best method


Ohhhh, I've been doing it for a few years now, so I think I've done it a bit more then you and other armchair survivalists in here. lol!

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## Stroover

> I have been told that if your pee is any color but clear that you are dehydrated. I keep my urine clear and if it has a tinge of yellow I drink more water.


The fact is, if your pee is clear you have too much water in your system and could be lowering your electrolytes (that's a bad thing), and if you're dehydrated your pee is a dark yellowish color.

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## wareagle69

well its a god thing you are here to set all of us posers straight then eh? i have been to busy training in the bush witth allen beuachamp so i have not been here to learn from someone with all of your skill sets and have missed your writings, i will have to read about you and learn from your many years of wisdom thanks for sticking around and helping all of us inept folks out

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## Rick

Stroover, please site your source on the clear urine post. I'd very much like to see that because I do not necessarily agree with it. While clear urine can certainly be indicative of 
a number of problems (liver disease or hyper-hydration) that symptom alone would not be problematic. The same thing can occur with the consumption of diuretics and is harmless.

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## Stroover

@ wareagle69: You're welcome.  :Smile: 

@ Rick: I don't have anything online for ya as it's not something I googled and passed on to you folks. It's a trick we learned in wilderness survival a few years back.


**p.s.**: I just did a quick google search and right off the bat this showed up: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_bright_yellow_urine_normal

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## crashdive123

We had a doc that does wilderness medicine that used an expression (I may not have it exactly right, so no quotes) regarding levels of hydration and examining your urine flow.

If your pee is clear, have no fear.
If your pee is yellow, you're a hurtin' fellow.

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## NightShade

> well its a god thing you are here to set all of us posers straight then eh? i have been to busy training in the bush witth allen beuachamp so i have not been here to learn from someone with all of your skill sets and have missed your writings, i will have to read about you and learn from your many years of wisdom thanks for sticking around and helping all of us inept folks out


Hehehehe....lol......   Good too see u back WE!

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## jeminiii

Different types of pine needles each have different flavors. Very nutritious and loaded with vitamin A and C, as well as tannin, which also is an antioxidant. Pine needle tea has been used all over the world to prevent scurvy in the winter.

Any species of pine or fir tree needle will make a good tea. Each have a distinctive flavor. Take fresh pine needles from near the tree trunk, as taking green needles at the ends of branches can impair the tree's growth. 

Avoid needles from trees situated near busy roads or in areas near farm crops that may have been sprayed with chemicals, pollutants and toxins. Also, it is best to avoid pines and firs sold as Christmas trees, as they may have been sprayed with pesticides and/or flame retardants.

Spruce buds and fir buds in Spring are wonderful too, eaten raw, and fresh cedar leaves also make a lovely tea.

Enjoy...!

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## Ken

Hey, jeminii!  How about an Introduction?   :Smile: 

http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...ead.php?t=7813

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## Sarge47

You claim to be a tracker, so follow the "tracks" (http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...ead.php?t=7813) over to the intro section & tell us about yourself, otherwise you're considered "rude" & your credibility is null.   :Cool2:

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