Does Your Child Play Sports? Why They Need a Mouth Guard
You wouldn’t send your child off to play tackle football without a helmet. As your family dentist, we have to ask: Why do you let them play without a mouth guard?
Mouth guards technically aren’t required for every sport, so their importance is easy to overlook. But did you know roughly 3 million children’s teeth are knocked out every year because of sports. At our dental care clinic in Blue Ash, we’ve seen the results first hand. And since many of these injuries occur in older children, these are adult teeth we’re talking about — which can have lasting impacts on their oral health the rest of their lives. Not only that, but prosthetic teeth aren’t cheap!
The Importance of Wearing a Mouth Guard
More than 200,000 oral injuries are prevented each year by wearing a mouthguard, according to the American Dental Association. Mouth guards work to prevent chipped, broken, and knocked out teeth. They protect not only the teeth but the gums and jawbone from serious injury.
“It is important for kids who play sports to start wearing mouthguards from a young age so it becomes a routine and habit-formed,” sports and exercise medicine physician Anne Rex, DO, FAOASM, tells the Cleveland Clinic. “The mouthguard isn’t optional but regarded as any other piece of their essential equipment and uniform.”
Not only will mouth guards help protect your child’s teeth from injury, but they also help reduce the severity of a concussion. Mouth guards help to redistribute forces from hits to the head, lowering your child’s risk to brain injury.
Who Should Wear a Mouthguard?
If they play any kind of sport, children as young as eight all the way up to adulthood should wear a mouthguard. This is especially true for high impact sports like basketball, hockey, football, and lacrosse, but even sports we don’t think of as dangerous can benefit from wearing a mouth guard. If your child is into skateboarding, mountain biking, or climbing, they should wear a mouth guard.
What if Your Child Wears Braces
At our Cincinnati family dental practice, we’re asked a lot if children who wear braces should also wear mouth guards. Absolutely! An injury to the face can damage orthodontic brackets or other fixed appliances, so it is especially important. If your child wears braces, talk to your family dentist or orthodontist about the right mouthguard to get. You can get one specifically designed to accommodate and protect the braces.
Types of Mouth guards
Stock mouth protectors are preformed mouthguards you can buy in sports stores and online. They are inexpensive, but there is little that can be done to adjust their fit. They are also bulky and can make breathing and talking difficult.
Boil and bite mouth protectors are also fairly affordable and available at most sporting goods stores. These are made from a thermoplastic material that you heat in hot water and bite into, forming a more custom fit unique to your child’s mouth.
Custom fitted mouth guards are made to order. They are made in a dental office or a professional laboratory. We can help you get one. We first make an impression of your teeth at our office. Then we use that impression to make a mould from a model using a highly specialized material. This kind of mouthguard is the most expensive, but you end up with one that specially fits your child. It’s easier to fit, talk and breathe. It’s improved comfort also improves the chances your child will actually wear the mouth guard and not leave it in a gym bag.