Mouth Guards or Mouth Protectors Updates

The American Dental Association recommends mouthguards for the following sports:

•Acrobatics • Basketball • Boxing • Discus Throwing • Field Hockey • Football • Gymnastics • Handball • Ice Hockey • Lacrosse • Martial Arts • Racquetball • Rugby • Shotputting • Skateboarding • Snowboarding • Skiing • Skydiving • Soccer • Squash • Surfing • Volleyball • Water Polo • Weightlifting • Wrestling

Custom-made mouthguards are better than store-bought because they conform to your actual bite and are made of more durable material!

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Warning: If you have braces or bridgework you should 
wear a mouthguard that is fitted by your dentist.

Crash test dummy to build a better mouthguard 

Two summers ago, a 10-year-old boy playing Little League baseball found himself sprinting for home plate. When he glanced up to check the throw from second, the ball smacked him square in the mouth. In an instant, the boy lost three upper incisors. The ball luxated the fourth, fractured his alveolar bone and drove four lower incisors back into his head. The boy wasn't wearing a mouthguard. But Dr. David Kenny, who fitted the boy for a partial denture, says he's treated so many smashed-in kids' faces in his 20 years of pediatric dentistry at the Hospital for Sick Children. "Kids' bones and teeth aren't done growing yet. "So when there's facial trauma, all you can really do is fit them with a partial denture, then remake and adjust it as they grow. That's thousands of dollars in dental expenses, with little or no insurance coverage."  Dr. Kenny believes a mouthguard should protect much better than so- called boil and bite mouthguards currently on the market—semi- circular pieces of rubber users heat in boiling water, then bite down to create an impression around the teeth.  Mouthguards are like bumpers on a car,the bumper takes the hit, but the car's frame—or in a person's case, bone—absorbs the real force of impact.Dr. Kenny agrees that custom-made mouthguards shaped by a dentist will fit better. Each cadaver will be fitted with all kinds of data input devices, including five strain gauges: one in the palette, two in the canine fossa and two in the bilateral zygoma. A baseball pitching machine will launch a baseball at 50 mph at the cadaver's four upper front teeth, which Dr. Kenny says suffer most from sports-related injuries.  Dr. Kenny and his colleagues will start building a working prototype of the new mouthguard. 
Posted March 24, 2003  ADA Org.

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Smashmouth

Anyone playing sports should invest in a custom-made mouth guard.  They are perfectly  fitted your mouth to protect you from injuries.   It is especially important for anyone wearing braces to invest in a mouthguard in order to prevent mouth lacerations and tooth damage..

Custom made mouthguards are best if you don't wear braces.  But even poorly fitting, over the counter mouthguards offer better protection than no mouth guard at all.  In fact, commercial mouthguards are, in some ways , better for people with braces because they offer an ideal alternative since it is difficult to properly fit a custom-made mouthguard on people with braces.

Source: DentalNotes Summer 2001

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Good reasons for using mouthguards in all sports:

                       

    Many of you will remember my posting a month or so ago about Terrence Long of the Oakland Athletics who was hit in the face during batting practice. The following is a news story on this young man that I saw today. 

     UPDATE:    Terrence Long is in a 19-for-94 (.202) slump since having his two front teeth pushed back when he was hit in the mouth by a ball thrown by Frank Menechino in a pre-game drill in Anaheim. Long admits there is a difference between him now and a month ago. "I have tied to hide it and ignore it, but it did affect me," he said. "I wasn't the same. I have tried to down play it a lot."

      Long has been told the process of stabilizing his teeth will be a lengthy one. He has just started to eat consistently after losing eight pounds because it was too painful to chew. "I am starting to get my strength back," he said. "I still have to cut up my food into little pieces into order to eat. But I'm getting used to the situation." 

     This looks like a combination of psychological aftereffects, as well as possible physical weakness from not being able to eat. It may be some time before Long is back to full capacity.

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