Mouth Guards
What is a Dental Appliance?
While routine brushing and flossing can help prevent many dental concerns, there is more that you can do to help protect your mouth.
For those of us who play sports or who clench or grind our teeth, dental appliances can help preserve and protect our oral structures, and the health of our whole bodies.
Dental appliances offered at Southwood Dental including mouth guards for sports and sleep, can help to prevent serious dental issues from arising.
Custom-Fitted Sports Mouth Guards
Sports mouthguards are an appliance that is made to fit comfortably over your teeth. These mouthguards are worn while performing sports activities and are made to help protect against injuries to the teeth and the surrounding areas within the mouth.
When you are playing sports and are hit in the mouth or teeth, the mouth guard will help to cushion the hit, allowing the force to be evenly absorbed. Along with protecting your teeth, the mouth guard will also protect the soft tissues within the mouth from being injured.
These mouth guards may also help prevent any broken or chipped teeth from cutting the soft tissues or gums during a sports-related injury
Custom-Fitted Night Guards
If you grind your teeth during sleep, a mouth guard will help protect your teeth from damage. If you clench your jaw, a mouth guard will also help prevent you from clenching and in turn provide you with relief from pain that the clenching may have caused.
While these mouthguards may not be able to completely prevent the grinding that occurs at night, they can provide a protective barrier that can protect your teeth from further damage caused by this habit.
When you grind your teeth it slowly wears away the tooth enamel, this can compromise the physical integrity of your teeth, causing nerve damage over time and leading to more expensive treatment.