BITE AND BALANCE - COULD WEARING A MOUTH GUARD LESSEN PAIN AND IMPROVE ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE?
From web site The mouth guards may mean less work for the postural muscles and more stability for athletes such as ice hockey players. By Chris Berdik Like most Canadians, Serge Bourgeois, the men’s hockey coach at New Brunswick’s Universitรฉ de Moncton, takes the sport seriously. Naturally he was skeptical when a local dentist, Patrick Girouard, DG11, suggested that mouth guards might help his team skate better, shoot straighter and suffer fewer muscle aches and strains. Mouth guards aren’t mandated for college hockey players in Canada. But there is some evidence that they may protect athletes from concussions by absorbing the shock of blows to the head and stabilizing the head and neck muscles, and Bourgeois encouraged his players to wear them. So when Girouard asked if the team would help him investigate the relationship between bite, balance and performance, Bourgeois put his skepticism aside. “I was all for it,” he says. Girouard is conducting the research fo...
