Visiting our Philadelphia Dentist Office Can Keep Your Teeth Safe from Injury During Sports Season

Fall sports are here and as a Philadelphia dentist we can help to make sure that you and your child’s teeth stay safe from injury.  When thinking about tossing the ball around with your son, it is hard to worry about your teeth becoming damaged.  The same holds true when heading out to the basketball court, but the reality is that teeth can become damaged fairly easily, and it is important to take steps to prevent it from happening.

The American Dental Association reported that the majority of adult tooth injuries are due to playing sports and between 13 and 39 percent of tooth loss is also due to sports injuries.  When you consider how few adults have the opportunity to play sports professionally, this highlights the fact that your teeth can become damaged even in a casual game of softball. The best way to protect yourself is to keep your teeth healthy.  The healthier your teeth and gums are, the stronger they will be.  It’s a fairly simple concept. When something has a slight crack or is damaged, putting pressure on it or hitting it will cause the object to break.  If, however, it is in perfect shape it will hold together even when pressure is applied.  Your teeth operate the same way. Healthy teeth can withstand a lot of pressure and even an occasional collision with a ball or elbow.  Unhealthy teeth will likely break under the same circumstances.

As a Philadelphia dentist, we recommend that you brush and floss your teeth throughout the day and eat a healthy diet that contains nuts, lean protein, dairy products, and vegetables in order to promote healthy teeth. Combine this with teeth cleanings twice a year so that we can remove bacteria and plaque that has become trapped in hard to reach places.  These regular appointments also give us the opportunity to catch any cavities or signs of infection and treat them right away, before they can spread.  This simple step allows us to help your teeth to stay strong so that they will be able to withstand more abuse later on.

The American Dental Association also recommends wearing mouth guards while playing sports.  They estimate that over 200,000 college and high school athletes are saved from tooth injuries every year because of them. The challenge is that most sports don’t require players to wear a mouth guard, so injuries are common across the board.  Basketball, for example, has a high rate of tooth injuries with the University of California reporting that 11 out of every 100 players were injured in this area while playing for the university.  Wearing a mouth guard could have protected many of these injuries – something that you can elect to do on your own.

As a Philadelphia dentist, we want our patients to stay in the best possible oral health. We will work with you to ensure that you, and all of the athletes in your family, continue to have healthy and strong teeth.