During sports activities, it is important to have a mouthguard that allows you to protect both your mouth and your teeth from bumps that can damage you, even in a rather serious way. If you want to protect your teeth from possible trauma, which is very frequent when practising sports, you must choose a mouthguard suitable for your teeth.
The Basketball mouthguard performs the function of buffering shocks; sometimes, they are used to create a sort of barrier between teeth, cheeks, lips, or tongue, as in cases of BRUXISM when you grind your teeth involuntarily. To be useful, a mouthguard must allow the wearer to breathe well first of all. To speak, it must remain firmly in place, be easily usable, durable, easy to clean, odourless, and tasteless. The mouthguard is usually used to protect the upper teeth, although, if you have prostheses or appliances or jaw problems, dentists also recommend protecting the lower teeth.
Mouthguards: Who Needs To Protect Their Teeth?
Tooth protection is essential if you play a sport, especially if the latter is violent. Teeth can easily break due to a bump. Even if mouthguards come at a cost, repairing or replacing broken teeth is more expensive, so prevention is better than cure, even for a simple reason of convenience!
The protection of the teeth can be used by anyone who practices a sports activity, whether a child or an adult, of contact such as football, lacrosse, hockey, boxing, MMA, water polo, basketball, rugby, etc. Even sports without direct physical contact, such as gymnastics or skateboarding and the bicycle itself, can be dangerous for the mouth in the event of a fall. We, therefore, suggest that you wear a protective Basketball mouthguard in these cases as well. The advantage of using protection is that if you were to fall or come into contact with another body and hit violently, the teeth would be kept entirely safe and the other soft parts of the mouth, such as the tongue and cheeks.
Things To Know When Going To Choose A Mouthguard
A basketball mouthguard made with highly stable biocompatible thermoplastic resin using discs of different thicknesses, from 3 to 4 mm, on models in plaster is the best mouthguard. While the other, indicated for those who practice boxing, has an even more complex and accurate processing, with the final result of a mouthguard in silicone (therefore soft) and not in resin.
The Forces
This is a very important point to carefully evaluate to choose the right sports mouthguard. Last but not least, in addition to protecting the teeth, it should be remembered that the thickness of the mouthguard also protects the lips, preventing them from being torn due to their possible impact on the teeth themselves. There is, in fact, a direct relationship between the thickness of the mouthguard (and, therefore, its ability to absorb and redistribute forces during the traumatic event) and the traumatic forces them.
Hygiene Of The Sports Mouthguard
It is important to remember the disinfection and maintenance protocol for these appliances, which is often neglected, resulting in changes in colour and unpleasant odours. The hygiene of the Basketball mouthguard must be carried out after use, with a daily brushing using a dedicated toothbrush with hard bristles or a nail brush, using toothpaste or disinfectant tablets to avoid bacterial contamination.
Case Of The Mouthguard For Sportsmen
The mouthguard, after use, must be placed in a case, preferably ventilated, to avoid any stagnation that would facilitate bacterial contamination.
Conclusion
The mouthguard is an intraoral device; it is a hard or soft resin inserted in the mouth, on the occlusal and incisal surface of the teeth (on the upper or lower arch or both, depending on the type of mouthguard chosen). To create correct contact with the teeth of the antagonist arch, freeing the teeth from their usual closure, protecting them from trauma, eliminating any myofascial tensions, and reducing the possibility of dental and bone fractures of the jaws.
The mouthguard or bite always represents a foreign body in the mouth. Therefore, it must be constructed to be comfortable, not only regarding the occlusion but also its size. The mouthguard duration and use time must be established and agreed upon with the dentist.
