MOUTH GUARDS

Types of Mouth Guards:

Sports guards

Our dental team believes in protecting your teeth from injury, wear and pain. Our goal is to prevent our patients from needing potentially expensive dental procedures that can result from broken teeth due to sports injuries.

If you participate in karate, football, basketball or soccer, please let your dental professional know so that we can fabricate a custom sports guard and help you protect your beautiful smile!

Night guards

Sports aren't the only thing that can cause premature injury to teeth. Teeth can wear down prematurely when they are misaligned or occlude (bite) together in a way that generates greater forces on teeth than ideal. Many of us clench or grind our teeth at night, often without realizing it. When we do that our very strong jaw muscles can exert an enormous amount of pressure either clenching or grinding our teeth together. Over time this can lead to wear, chipping, cracking, and broken teeth. Pain on the teeth or at the gumline can also occur. Gums are often noticed to be receded on teeth with wear. Once teeth have lost the hard protective coat of enamel as a result of wear, the process of wear occurs at a more rapid pace because a softer part of the tooth (dentin) is exposed. When teeth are shorter as a result of wear, our facial appearance even changes. The distance between the tip of our nose and chin becomes shorter, resulting a prematurely aged appearance.

Jaw joint (TMJ) pain can also be caused by clenching or grinding. Your dentists and hygienists at Porteous and Burke Family Dentistry are always looking for signs and symptoms of premature tooth wear when you come in for regular appointments. If we suspect clenching or grinding, we will usually recommend wearing a night guard to protect your teeth. If we suspect there is another cause for the tooth wear such as tooth position or occlusion, we will discuss orthodontics with you. If we suspect that the wear we are seeing is the result of an airway issue such as sleep apnea, Dr. Matt or Dr. Pam will discuss a potential sleep study and sleep apnea appliances.