--- title: "Do I Need a Mouthguard for Sport?" source: https://celestialdental.org/do-i-need-a-mouthguard-for-sport publisher: Celestial Dental Centre (https://celestialdental.org) author: Celestial Dental Centre clinical team date_published: 2026-09-09 date_modified: 2026-09-10 topic: General Dentistry language: en --- # Do I Need a Mouthguard for Sport? Dentistry has very few interventions that are cheap, quick, entirely painless and prevent a lifetime of consequences. A mouthguard is one of them, which makes it strange how rarely they are worn here. Rugby, football, boxing, basketball, hockey and martial arts are all played at every level in this country, from school fields to national squads, and the great majority of players have never owned a mouthguard. Most people only think about one after somebody has already lost a tooth. ## Why does one knocked-out tooth matter so much? Because a permanent front tooth lost at fifteen is not a single event. It is the start of a maintenance commitment measured in decades. An adult tooth does not grow back. Whatever replaces it, whether a bridge, an implant or a denture, has a working life and will eventually need redoing, several times across a normal lifespan. The bone that held the tooth shrinks once the tooth is gone, which changes the shape of the gum and complicates every future repair. The options and their trade-offs are at celestialdental.org/missing-tooth-implant-bridge-denture-or-crown. Even a tooth that survives a knock is not necessarily fine. A blow can kill the nerve inside a tooth that looks completely normal, and the tooth then darkens months or years later and needs root canal treatment. There is no version of a dental injury that is cheaper than the mouthguard that would have prevented it. A mouthguard also does more than protect the teeth. It cushions the jaw, reduces the risk of a jaw fracture, and protects the lips and cheeks from being cut against the teeth. ## Which sports actually need one? More than most people assume. The rule is straightforward: if there is any realistic chance of contact with another player, with equipment, with a ball, or with the ground, wear one. Clearly needed: - **Rugby**, at every level including sevens and touch training, and at school - **Boxing, kickboxing and martial arts** of every kind, including sparring - **Hockey** - **Basketball**, which produces far more dental injuries than people expect, almost all from elbows - **Football**, particularly goalkeepers and anyone contesting high balls. Not traditional here, but the injuries are real Worth considering: - **Skateboarding, BMX, mountain biking and motorsport** - **Athletics events involving equipment**, and any sport played on hard ground - **Gym work involving heavy lifting**, where people clench hard - **Any contact sport played by someone in braces**, where the stakes are higher and a specialised guard is needed The unglamorous truth is that most dental injuries in sport happen in training and in casual games, not in matches, because that is when nobody bothers with protection. Two things make this worse locally. The first is the ground. A great deal of school and club sport here is played on murram or bare hard-packed earth rather than grass, and a face-first fall onto that surface does to a front tooth roughly what you would expect. The second is that mouthguards are simply not part of the culture. Rugby is played seriously at school level across the country, boxing gyms are everywhere, and yet a player turning up with a guard is unusual enough to be remarked on. Nobody is being careless; the equipment just was never treated as standard the way boots and shin pads were. If you coach or run a team, this is one of the few pieces of safety equipment where a single conversation at the start of a season prevents injuries all year. ## What are the different types? Three broad categories, and the differences matter more than the price gap suggests. **Stock guards**, bought ready-made in a fixed size. They are the cheapest and the worst. They cannot be adjusted, they are bulky, they interfere with speech and breathing, and because they are held in place by clenching your teeth together, they fall out the moment you open your mouth. Players hate them and therefore do not wear them, which makes them worthless in practice. **Boil-and-bite guards**, softened in hot water and bitten into shape. Widely sold and much better than nothing, provided they are formed properly. The problems are that people rarely follow the instructions exactly, the material thins over the biting surfaces exactly where thickness is needed most, and they lose their shape over time and with repeated heating. They also fit poorly around braces. **Custom-made guards**, made from a mould or scan of your teeth in a dental laboratory. They fit precisely, stay put without clenching, allow speech and breathing, are made in the right thickness where it matters, and last far longer. For anyone playing regularly, in a contact sport, or wearing braces, this is the one that is actually worth having, because it is the one that gets worn. The best mouthguard is genuinely the one your child will keep in their mouth. A guard in a kit bag protects nobody. ## What about mouthguards with braces? Essential, and a specific case rather than a general one. Braces raise the stakes in both directions. A knock can drive the lips and cheeks onto the brackets and cause severe lacerations, and it can damage the appliance itself and set the treatment back. Anyone in braces playing contact sport should be wearing protection every session. A standard boil-and-bite guard is a poor answer here, because the teeth are moving throughout treatment and a guard moulded to today's tooth positions will not fit next month, and may even resist the tooth movement you are paying for. What is needed is an orthodontic mouthguard, made of a softer material designed to fit over brackets with room to accommodate movement. Tell us you are in braces when you ask about a guard. And if a bracket does get damaged in a game, that is a separate short appointment rather than something to leave until the next adjustment, see celestialdental.org/braces-bracket-broke-what-to-do. ## How do I look after it? A mouthguard is a piece of equipment and it fails when neglected. The two mistakes we see most: - **Heat.** Never wash a guard in hot water, never pour boiling water over it to clean it, never put it in a sufuria, and never leave it on a dashboard or a sunny windowsill. Heat distorts the material permanently, and a distorted guard neither fits nor protects. Rinse it in cold water only - **Storing it wet in a sealed bag**, which is how it grows a smell and a bacterial film The routine that works: - **Rinse in cold water before and after every use** - **Brush it gently with a soft brush and cool water**, or with a little mild soap, then rinse thoroughly - **Let it dry fully** before storing - **Keep it in a ventilated case**, not loose in a kit bag where it gets crushed or sat on - **Bring it to your dental appointments** so we can check the fit and the wear - **Replace it** when it is thin, torn, distorted or no longer stays put - **Children and teenagers need replacing more often**, because jaws are still growing and teeth are still arriving. A guard made at twelve will not fit properly at fourteen - **Never share one**, and never let anyone else wear it ## What do I do if a tooth is knocked out anyway? Guards reduce injuries, they do not eliminate them, so everyone involved in sport should know this, and it is worth every coach and parent knowing it too. A permanent tooth knocked completely out is one of the few genuine dental emergencies where minutes decide the outcome. In short: find the tooth, hold it by the crown and never by the root, do not scrub it clean, and either put it straight back into the socket or keep it in milk while you get to a dentist. A tooth kept dry in a tissue has minutes. A tooth transported properly has hours. The full instructions, worth reading before you ever need them, are at celestialdental.org/knocked-out-tooth-what-to-do. For a tooth that is broken rather than lost, see celestialdental.org/chipped-broken-tooth-repair-options. And if a tooth was knocked but seems fine, still have it checked, because a nerve can die silently long afterwards. A practical suggestion for anyone running a team: keep a small pot of milk or a proper tooth-preservation solution in the first aid kit, and make sure whoever carries that kit knows what to do. It is a very cheap way to save somebody's front tooth. ## Does insurance or SHA cover a mouthguard? Custom mouthguards are usually classed as preventive appliances and are among the items more likely to be excluded, since many schemes cover treatment rather than protective equipment, and cover varies by insurer, scheme and member category. Treatment of an actual dental injury is a different matter and is more commonly covered, though a sports injury may fall under a personal accident or a school policy rather than your dental benefit, so it is worth knowing which applies before you need it. Celestial Dental accepts SHA for eligible schemes and bills more than 20 private insurers directly, including Jubilee, AAR, Madison, CIC, Britam, APA and Equity Bank Insurance. Send your insurer or SHA scheme name, member category and preferred branch and the team will confirm what applies. See celestialdental.org/dental-insurance-and-sha-coverage. ## Book a fitting before the season starts The right time to get a mouthguard made is before the season, not after the first injury. It takes a short appointment to take the mould, and the guard is made from that. Celestial Dental Centre has clinics in **Kasarani (Nairobi)**, **Kamakis (Ruiru)** and **Eldoret**, open every day from 07:00 to 20:00, so training schedules and weekend fixtures are usually easy to work around. Call or WhatsApp **+254 707 535 000** or book online at celestialdental.org. Tell us the sport, the player's age, and whether they are in braces or expecting to start treatment soon, because all three change what we make. If you are organising a school or club team, ask about arranging fittings together. --- **How to cite:** Celestial Dental Centre. "Do I Need a Mouthguard for Sport?" Celestial Dental Centre Blog, 2026-09-09. https://celestialdental.org/do-i-need-a-mouthguard-for-sport **About the publisher:** Celestial Dental Centre is a dental clinic group in Kenya with branches in Kasarani (Nairobi), Kamakis (Ruiru), and Eldoret, open daily 07:00–20:00. Bookings: https://celestialdental.org/?book=1 · Phone/WhatsApp: +254 707 535 000. All articles: https://celestialdental.org/blog.md