Today’s mouthguards enhance performance, offer more protection and are more marketable

Time to play a little “Dental Jeopardy!”

Answer: gutta percha.

Question: What were the first athletic

mouthguards made of? (OK,

even Alex Trebek would’ve had a

tough time with this one.)

Double Jeopardy! Answer: Has his

own line of custom mouthguards.

Question: Who is Shaquille

O’Neal?

Indeed, there is little doubt that

today’s athletic mouthguards are

not like your granddaddy’s mouthguards,

but more like Shaq Daddy’s.

Mouthguard history

Athletic mouthguards, or mouthpieces,

have been around for nearly 120

years since a London dentist named

Woolf Krause developed them in

1890 to protect boxers from lip lacerations.

Known as “gum shields,” they

were made from gutta-percha.

Krause’s son Philip, also a dentist

and an amateur boxer, refined the

design and began making the shields

from vella rubber.

Mouthguards were first introduced

in the United States by Chicago

dentist Thomas Carlos in 1916.

For decades, mouthguards remained

largely unchanged.

It was not until the early 1960s

that a Canadian pediatric dentist

named Arthur Wood, appalled by the

number of dental injuries he saw in

hockey players, developed a “mug

guard” or “teeth guard” for which he

became known as the father of the

modern mouthguard.

Since then, mouthguard materials,

fabrication techniques and subsequent

fit have been improved to

increase both protection and comfort.

Mouthguards today

Most recently, mouthguard design

has been studied in an attempt to

enhance athletic performance as

well as decrease the incidence of

concussions.

The central focus has been on

the role of the mouthguard to guide

occlusion and, in turn, condylar position

within the fossa.

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