Protect Your Teeth From Sporting Accidents This Summer
The benefits of custom fit mouth guards.
As summer finds its way back to us (finally!) we all look forward to the longer sunny evenings. They bring with them so many possibilities, like barbeques, sitting outside with friends with drinks, camping and of course, sports.
In summer, the opportunity to play sports suddenly becomes much bigger as we can leave work and get out onto a field or court, sometimes until 11PM at night at the height of summer. This is great news for our bodies, as sport is excellent for overall health.
Did you know you can burn over 300 calories in half an hour playing football for example? There’s a lot of ‘cardio’ to be enjoyed, along with muscle toning and stretching, all in the great outdoors, which has many benefits for the mind as well.
The only problem you may come across if you do enjoy sports in summer, especially if they are contact sports or ball sports, is that your dental health is at risk. One of the most common injuries in sport is losing a tooth, or soft tissue damage when part of another person’s body, or a ball or piece of sports equipment literally smashes into the mouth.
The most common sports injuries are:
Cracked Teeth – Usually this happens when something hits the face abruptly. These can range in severity and may not even be noticeable at first.
Fractured Roots – A blow at a certain angle may result in the root of the tooth being fractured, rather than the tooth itself.
Tooth Intrusion – Rather than a tooth getting knocked out of the mouth, this is where it gets knocked into the jawbone instead. It tends to be a common occurrence in children with baby teeth because the tooth sockets are softer.
What to do….
If you do find that you have a dental emergency, please give Abbey Road Dental a call on 02076241603 if it is during our opening hours which you can find on our website. Alternatively call 111 to get access to your nearest emergency out of hours dentist.
You might also want to take action to prevent a dental injury if you take part in contact sports or ball sports regularly. Here at Abbey Road Dental in St John’s Wood we can create a custom mouth-guard for you to help protect your mouth when you play these sports.
A custom mouthguard is better than one bought ‘from the shelf’ or a ‘one size fits all’ mouth-guard because it is moulded to fit your mouth, so offers specific protection a ‘one size fits all’ guard wouldn’t. This might not seem worth it, especially if you only play once a week. However, the type of injuries that can be sustained can be very painful and require very intricate dental work to fix. You may end up sustaining permanent damage, and it could end up costing a lot of money to repair, not to mention the pain and inconvenience following the incident.
Mouth-guards are also recommended for children, as their developing teeth and gums may sustain damage that could impact their permanent adult teeth; so preventing that kind of injury is really important.
Please Call Our St John’s Wood Clinic In NW8 Today
If you would like to talk about having a custom mouth-guard made, or you want to register as a new patient, please give our local clinic a call on 02076241603 and we will be more than happy to help and give you more information.