Athletic Mouthguards

Custom-fitted Mouthguards in Sacramento, CA

Mouthguards can protect teeth during contact sports and other risky activities.

Accidents happen… and dental injuries during athletic competition are an all-too-common occurrence. Once a tooth is cracked, broken—or worse, knocked out—there’s no going back. It’s for keeps.

The National Institute of Dental Research reports a dramatic drop in mouth and face injuries to football-players since the 1960s, largely due to rules established requiring the use of mouthguards and headgear. However, of the sports with most youth participants (baseball/softball and soccer), researchers found that only 7% wore mouthguards most of the time.

Protecting faces and mouths from bats and balls is just as important as from hard-charging linemen! Football has mouthguard protection written into its rule book, but many other sports and risky activities do not.

If your child is involved in any sports activity (even a pickup basketball game) a well-fitting mouthguard is the least expensive and most effective protection you can have.

There are three general types of mouthguard:

• Stock or Pre-formed. Inexpensive, yes. But one-size-fits-all usually means one-size-fits-nobody. And the mouthguard that sits unused is doing no good.
• Boil-and-bite. Usually available at sporting good stores and with a better fit than stock guards. But if the preparation steps aren’t followed correctly, you may not get a good fit.
• Custom-fitted at a dental office. The Gold Standard. Developed from a cast model of the wearer’s mouth, the fit is more precise—and more comfortable—than the alternatives. Result: they’re far more likely to be worn by the student-athlete routinely.

And isn’t that the entire point of having a mouthguard?