Stop grinding away afortune in enamel.

One name, two completely different appliances

People use "mouth guard" for two things that have almost nothing in common.

A sports mouth guard absorbs impact. It protects teeth, lips, and jaw during contact, and it is worn for an hour or two at a time.

A night guard manages the forces your own jaw muscles generate while you sleep. It is thinner, fits precisely, and is worn for seven or eight hours a night.

They are made differently and they solve different problems. Below is what each one involves, and then the part about night guards that we handle differently than most practices in this market.

Sports mouth guards, and why the boil-and-bite version falls short

If your kid plays football, basketball, wrestles, or rides, a mouth guard is the cheapest insurance available. A knocked-out front tooth is a lifetime of dentistry starting at age twelve.

Store-bought boil-and-bite guards are better than nothing. The trouble is that they are bulky, they loosen as they warm up, and kids take them out because they cannot talk or breathe well. A guard sitting in a gym bag protects nothing.

A custom guard is made from a scan or impression of your actual teeth. It is thinner where it can be and thicker where impact lands, it stays put without clenching to hold it, and you can talk in it. Compliance goes up dramatically, which is the entire point. We can make them in team colors, which matters more to a fourteen-year-old than any argument about dental costs.

A Valley Sport Custom guard runs $250 and takes about two visits. Ask at your child's next cleaning.

The Valley Sport Pro smart guard

We also fit the Valley Sport Pro for $950 — a custom guard with sensors built into it, made on the ORB Sport platform by our dental lab. It uses the same biocompatible EVA material as our standard guard, so it protects the same way, and it pairs over Bluetooth to track more than twenty metrics during training and competition: live heart rate, movement and step count, head impact region and force, active calories, distance covered, and session intensity. Fitness trackers on the wrist are not much use in a contact sport. This one sits in the only place that stays put.

Two things to know before you decide. The app requires its own subscription, billed separately by the manufacturer, and we will go over the current cost with you before you order anything. And the Pro is not suitable while you are in braces or aligners — teeth move, and the fit will not hold. The manufacturer includes a six-month warranty.

The Valley Sport Pro tracks athletic performance data. It is not a medical device, it is not FDA cleared, and it is not designed or intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, or mitigate any disease or condition — including concussion. Anyone who takes a hard hit needs a person to evaluate them, not an app.

See the full Valley Sport breakdown, the metrics it tracks, and team fitting days

Night guards for grinding and clenching

You may not know you grind. Most people find out one of three ways: a partner mentions the sound, they wake with a sore jaw or a headache at the temples, or a dentist points out enamel worn flat, small chips along the edges, teeth that have become sensitive to cold, or fillings and crowns that keep breaking.

The forces involved are substantial, far higher than normal chewing, and they are applied for hours with no conscious limit. Over years, that wears teeth down, strains the jaw joint, and cracks restorations.

A custom night guard is a hard or dual-laminate appliance made to fit your teeth precisely. It gives the forces something to land on that is not your enamel, and it usually eases muscle soreness within a few weeks. It takes two visits: a scan or impression, then a fitting where we adjust the bite so it feels even.

Night guards run $686 to $1,343, and many dental plans cover a portion. We will check.

Most offices hand you a night guard and stop. We look for the cause.

Here is the part worth reading twice.

A night guard protects your teeth. It does not stop you from grinding. If nobody asks why you are grinding in the first place, you have covered the symptom and left the cause running every night.

Grinding and clenching are frequently connected to a compromised airway. The current thinking is that when breathing becomes obstructed during sleep, the body may respond with jaw and muscle activity that helps reopen the airway. Under that model, clenching is not a bad habit. It may be a protective reflex responding to a breathing problem.

That is why our hygiene team screens for it. During your visit we look at tongue posture and mobility, the width of your upper arch, tonsil size, scalloping along the edges of your tongue, and where your wear facets actually sit. We also look at the pattern of symptoms that tends to travel with grinding: morning headaches, waking with a dry mouth, snoring, a partner who has noticed you stop breathing, and daytime fatigue that coffee does not fix.

If those findings line up, we will tell you, and we can talk about a sleep apnea oral appliance or myofunctional therapy rather than only a night guard. Laura Williams, our hygienist, has practiced myofunctional therapy for more than ten years, which is a credential no other practice in this market has.

To be careful with our language: these connections are associations, not certainties, and grinding has other contributors including stress, bite alignment, and some medications. Our screening is educational and is not a diagnosis. A sleep study ordered by a physician is what confirms sleep apnea. But you should at least be asked the question, and most people never are.