25 Sep How the Fit of a Mouth Guard can Affect Injury
Properly diagnosed, designed and fitted mouth-guards are essential in the prevention of athletic oral and facial injuries. A properly fitted mouth-guard must be protective, comfortable, resilient, tear resistant, odorless, tasteless, not bulky, and cause minimal interference to speaking and breathing. Most importantly, the piece should have excellent retention, fit well, and what is unknown to many, have sufficient thickness in critical areas.
There are three major types of mouth-guards that are available on the market. We will share with you some of the features, characteristics, as well as unknown consequences to each type.
1. Stock Mouth-guards
These protectors are ready to be use right out of the box without any further preparation. Although this option may be the lowest cost, they have the highest risk to cause further damage to your jaw and also provide the least protection for your oral sporting needs. These stock mouth-guards are bulky and have a lack of retention, therefore they must be held in place by constantly biting down. This could further injure your jaw should you receive any physical impact, or could cause damage if you are biting down in an unsafe way.
2. Boil & Bite Mouth-guards
These are currently the most commonly used mouth-guards on the market as user find them more comfortable than stock mouth-guards. However they present consequential risks that users may not be aware of. These mouth-guards often lack proper extension and repeatedly do not cover all the posterior teeth. Additionally, without the proper knowledge, users could be creating a mouth-guard with an improper bite that could encourage further injury and improper positioning in the jaw. These are factors that increase chances of injury from a blow to the chin.
3. Custom made Mouth-guards
Custom made mouth-guards are supplied by your dentist. This option provides the dentist with the critical ability to address several important issues in the fitting period. They fulfill all the criteria for adaption, retention, comfort and stability of material. This option interferes the least with speaking and studies have show that custom made mouth-guards have virtually no effect on breathing. The dentist can ensure that you are creating a mouth-guard with a proper fit that will help reduce your risk to injury.
Signal Hill Dental Centre is proud to offer custom made Under-Armour Performance mouth-guards. Contact us today for a consultation.