At Center for Beautiful Smiles we take care of many patients who remain active in their daily lives. We’d never dissuade a patient from playing the sport that they love, but we’d like to take a moment to highlight some of the riskier sports when it comes to your oral health.
In many cases, a mouthguard can do wonders, so please make sure that if you engage in any of the sports listed below that you be sure to protect yourself so that you don’t have to come in and see us in the instance of an oral health emergency.
Combat Sports
It’s a well-known fact that boxing and MMA can do some serious damage to your grill, but there are a lot of protective measures you can take, like wearing a mouthguard and wearing protective headgear. Also, you can work extra hard on your defense skills and footwork, that way you take less shots to the face and mouth.
Hockey
We’ve all seen that stereotypical hockey player flash a smile with more than a few teeth missing, or maybe with an entire bottom row caved in from taking a slapshot to the grill. Again, wearing a mouthguard and a helmet with a face mask can protect you from a lot of the risk, but there are no guarantees in this sport. Please note that you can reduce your risk of losing teeth exponentially by not blocking shots with your face.
Basketball
Basketball is the biggest sleeper out of all of these sports. It is actually far more likely that you know someone who has experienced an oral health injury while playing basketball. There are more dental emergencies in basketball than hockey and MMA combined!
Many players fail to wear mouthguards while playing basketball because they do not realize how physical the sport actually is. You can take an elbow to the mouth while trying to grab an offensive or defensive rebound and lose a tooth. It’s actually happened many times before, especially in NBA games. For this very reason, each NBA team has its own team dentist (same with the NHL).
If you experience an oral health injury while engaging in any one of these activities mentioned above, please contact Center for Beautiful Smiles today. We can treat injuries that occur while you’re being active, and we can also provide you with patient education that might help you avoid injuries in the future.