Why Custom Mouthguards Are The Only Choice For Your Child’s Braces

Your child’s braces are an expensive and important long-term investment, so it’s obviously important that they stay safe.

That’s especially true if you have a young athlete. Athletics doesn’t just increase the chance of your child suffering an orofacial injury — an injury to the mouth or face — but also the chance of their braces being damaged.

And that doesn’t just apply to those who play contact sports. Incidental contact is just a fact of sports and accidents happen. Considering the whole point of braces is to give your child a winning smile, it’s important their braces remain protected, whether their sport requires facial protection or not.

When it comes to protecting your kid’s braces — and their mouth in general — there really is only one real option: a custom mouthguard.

Just like fingerprints or your individual mouth structure, each set of braces is unique. Brackets and wires are placed to fit your child’s exact mouth and their specific treatment need.

So why trust a generic, one-size-fits-all mouthguard to protect those unique, one-of-a-kind braces?

Many off-the-shelf braces mouthguards don’t provide proper protection because of a poor fit. That’s because most generic mouthguards rely on the athlete to constantly bite on the mouthguard to keep it in place. Not only is that inefficient, it’s also uncomfortable and dangerous.

Only a custom mouthguard is able to give your child the exact fit they need for their mouth and their braces. With a mouthguard engineered to their specific mouth structure, their mouthguard has a tight enough fit to firmly stay on the upper teeth without being held in place with the lower jaw. That means without any biting or clenching.

Mouthguards should never come loose and float around the mouth. When a mouthguard fits snuggly, it stays in place during any impact and won’t become dislodged. That means your young athlete is properly protected, and their mouthguard won’t interfere or irritate their braces.

Speaking of which: braces occupy space in the mouth and need room to do their job — shift and adjust the teeth into place. That means your child’s mouthguard must accommodate that.

Many generic braces mouthguards are extra bulky to make room for the brackets and wires. However, that is highly uncomfortable and leads to athletes disliking and/or forgoing their mouthguards entirely — which kind of defeats the purpose of having a mouthguard. That extra bulkiness also makes it extremely difficult to breathe and speak.

Custom mouthguards are designed with a channel to fit over the brackets and wires without inhibiting orthodontic treatment or alignment. Not only does that remove all of the unnecessary material that makes generic mouthguards so bulky, but that patented design also makes them comfortable to wear.

Whether your kid plays a contact sport or not, they need proper protection for their mouth and their braces. Only a custom mouthguard with Gladiator’s patented Ortho-Channel^®provides the protection and comfort your young athlete needs. Learn more about the best braces protection at the link below.

Custom Is The Only Choice For Braces

Author Bio

Bobbie Quinn, co-founder of Gladiator Custom Mouthguards, played both lacrosse and field hockey as a youth and went on to play Division 1 women’s lacrosse in college. Bobbie continues to play women’s league field hockey and enjoys watching her son play various sports.