Mouth guards are dental products designed to provide at least partial or in some cases even adequate protection to the soft and hard internals of the mouth. The hard internals of the mouth include teeth and jaw bones. The soft internals of the mouth include lips, cheeks, tongue, and gums.
Mouth guards are mainly used in aggressive sports activities. Such activities include boxing, rugby, basketball, football, ice hockey, martial arts, wrestling, field hockey, soccer, and water polo.
Mouth guards are made of plastic though there designs may vary greatly. Some are categorized under stock, some under boil and bite, and some others under custom. Even the composition of the plastic used may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Various fabrication methods for the manufacture of mouth guards are used.
The advantage of wearing a mouth guard is that it can help to provide protection against tooth fracture, tooth dislocation and jaw bone fracture.
A mouth guard acts as a shock absorber. It therefore expends a significant portion of the force of a blow to the mouth by distributing the force over a greater area, so that the overall stress is reduced. A plastic mouth guard has resilience and stiffness. These two properties help it to reduce the overall stress and therefore effect a reduction in damage to teeth and jaw bones.
A properly designed boil and bite mouth guard can prevent damage to crowns, veneers, and dental implants on chewing surfaces of teeth.
A mouth guard acts as a buffer and even protects soft tissue in the mouth such as gums, cheeks, tongue, and lips. A soft mouth guard has rounded contours so that it can protect against injury to these parts to some extent.
Although a mouth guard provides some degree of protection, it cannot ensure that adequate protection will be provided in all cases. This is because the momentum of a blow to the mouth cannot be predicted in advance. It may exceed design limitations of the mouth guard material. In such a case, some injury or damage cannot be prevented to the internals of the mouth.
A custom mouth guard can help a sports person such as a boxer with some teeth missing, to provide some protection to their remaining teeth. It provides protection to the remaining teeth by surrounding them, and by doing so, provide the necessary support to them.
Through use of a custom mouth guard, a person can leave out dentures during a sports activity. Dentures can be damaged due to a blow to the mouth or the dentures may themselves become a cause of injury to the soft internals of the mouth.
A mouth guard may also prevent concussions in the skull. This is because a mouth guard acts as a shock absorber and diverts some force of a blow away from jaw bones. By doing so, it might just prevent concussion in the skull.
A well-designed mouth guard fits well, is comfortable, rip-resistant and tear-resistant, does not impede breathing in any way, and can be easily cleaned. |