Essential gear for rugby. Bespoke gum shield from £31
A properly fitted gum shield that’s moulded to your mouth is essential to protect your teeth. A dentist will make one for you, but a number of websites, such as GuardKit, offer the same service for a lower price. First you are sent a kit to take an impression of your teeth. You send this back to GuardKit, which will make a bespoke gum shield for you in its dental laboratory.
(The Sunday Times)
Basketball players' experience of dental injury and awareness about mouth guard. Although the awareness of gum shields among the basketball players was very high (80.1%), only one of 236 had used the custom gum shield.
(Dental Traumatology)
Wearing mouthguards do not seem to interfere with athletes' performance, at least when the device is custom-fit, a study suggests.
(International Journal of Sports Medicine)
An estimated 6000 teenage dental sports injuries occur each year because they don’t wear protective gum shields.
(England hockey factsheet 9)
"First of all, it is essential to educate the public that stock and boil and bite gum shields bought at sporting good stores do not provide the optimum treatment expected by the athlete"
(www.sportsdentistry.com)
The cost to repair the damage caused by a sports injury can easily be in the range of 10 to 30 times the cost of custom gum shields.
(Animated-Teeth.com)
The barriers to providing mouth protection were mainly financial combined with the difficulties of taking the child to the dentist. If the results from this small study are representative of the current situation, with regard to the wearing of gum shields by professional players and children, it appears that there is a need for all those involved to ensure that rugby-playing children wear gum shields.
(Prim Dental Care)
"Although wearing gum shields is currently not in the regulations of playing hockey they are strongly recommended and
parents are urged to take as many precautions when it comes to protecting injury to their children in
the game."
(Englandhockey.co.uk)
Exercise Capacity in Athletes with gum shields
The present study demonstrated that custom-made gum shields do not significantly affect or reduce maximum exercise performance of athletes.
(Int J Sports Med)
"Parents are advised to remember that the cost of custom gum shields is considerably cheaper than
the cost of repairing or replacing broken teeth."
(Englandhockey.co.uk)
"The dental profession unanimously supports the use of gum shields in a variety of sports activities. More than 200,000 injuries to the mouth and jaw occur each year."
(AGD, Academy of General Dentistry)
"Dental injuries and their consequences could be almost totally prevented by the use of gum shields."
(University of Manchester Dental Hospital)
"Coaches and dentist should encourage amateur and professional players of most sports to obtain and use well fitting dental gum shields to prevent the seriousness and incidence of injury"
(Journal of American Dental Association)
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