Jerry Pohorsky · 5 out of 5 stars · 3 months ago
I have a history of clench my jaw while I sleep and grinding my teeth. Years ago another dentist charged me $600 for a custom fitted night guard which fit between the upper and lower teeth to keep them separated. It had a tendency to cause my gag reflex, so he cut away the middle part which was between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. It worked and lasted for a long time until my teeth wore a hole in it. I discovered that I could buy a much less expensive night guard at the drug store and custom fit it to my teeth using boiling water to soften the surface that fit against my upper teeth and then cooling it slightly and putting it in my mouth. Biting down for a couple of minutes allowed the plastic material molding it to conform to my upper teeth and fit snuggly. It worked great, however it wore out after about six months when my teeth eventually wore a hole through it. I kept replacing them since they were so inexpensive until I saw another brand that was more compact and was designed by a dentist. Unfortunately it didn’t fit as snuggly against my teeth and I would sometimes wake up and find it shifted away from my teeth because it was so small and had fewer teeth it was in contact with. This led to severe damage to several of my teeth due to grind that occurred when the night guard was not positioned properly. I just had a dentist visit today with my new dentist and she diagnosed the cause of the damage as being caused by the smaller night guard’s poor fit leaving my teeth to grind against each other during sleep. She offered to make me a custom night guard, however I opted to buy one at Target that was only $20 and offered maximum protection making contact with all of my upper teeth. I just went through the fitting process with the new night guard from DenTek and it fits perfectly and stays in place. My new dentist was able to make fillings that restored my damaged teeth and now they are back to the way they were before I started using the smaller night guard. I took a photo of the small worthless night guard next to the DenTek “Professional Fit” Dental Guard that offers “Maximum Protection for a very low price. Jerry .
