Your mouth can be at risk in a number of situations and severely injuring your teeth and gums can be painful and require invasive surgery to rectify.  If you indulge in physical sports such as rugby, lacrosse or American football, or enjoy mountain biking or gymnastics, it is best if you wear a mouth guard to protect your teeth.  By doing so you lessen your chances of breaking, chipping or even losing a tooth.

Basic mouth guards

The most basic level of protection is offered by stock mouth guards that you can buy in sports shops. These are affordable but won’t protect your mouth comprehensively from all threats. As they are not tailor-made, they can often be uncomfortable to wear. So called ‘boil and bite’ mouth guards are more comfortable because you can mould them to your mouth by biting them when they have been submerged in boiling water and become malleable.

Custom-made mouth guards

By far the best protection that you can give your teeth if you are participating in a physical sport is to get your dentist to fit you a mouth guard.  Moulds of your teeth will be taken so that impressions can then be formed.  From these impressions a technician will fabricate your own personalised mouth guard.  These are far more comfortable to wear.

It is better to spend the small amount of money on a mouth guard than to sustain a painful injury that might require expensive surgery to rectify in any case.