Custom Fitting Sports Mouthguards

Benefits of Custom Fitting Sports Mouthguards

For over 50 years, high school football players have been required to wear mouthguards. Football is a high contact sport and it is logical that participants protect their teeth, gums, and jaw bone from injury. However, sports like soccer, basketball and volleyball can involve high impact collisions, but mouthguards are not yet required. Protecting you or your children with sports mouthguards lowers the threat of injury to their teeth, and new evidence is suggesting that it may even reduce the risk of concussions.

A broken or chipped tooth that results from facial trauma can lead to much larger and more expensive issues. If the damage is small enough, a filling can be placed on the tooth to regain its original shape and color. More traumatic injuries may require root canals, crowns or even loss of the tooth. This can cost thousands of dollars and take months to properly fix. Having your dentist custom fit a mouthguard can greatly lower the chances of injuring your teeth without inhibiting your ability to compete.

While there is no definitive way to completely eliminate the risk of concussions in contact sports, there is some evidence that suggests a properly fitting mouthguard can help reduce the probability. The logic suggests that the mouthguard attenuates some of the forces applied to the head and neck during upward contact with the chin. There are no current studies that establish a direct correlation with complete certainty, but the absence of proof is not necessarily proof of absence.

Parents will do so many things to protect their kids, and we believe wearing a custom fitted sports mouthguard is an easy step in reinforcing their safety in nearly all sports. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns regarding mouthguards or the differences between custom fitted guards and over the counter mouthguards.