Serving Craigie 6025
Dentistry for an Active Suburb
Craigie Leisure Centre draws swimmers, squad training, gym members and junior sport from across the northern suburbs, and that shows up in the mouths we see from this postcode. Sport is unambiguously good for you. It also brings three specific dental problems that most people have never been warned about.
At a glance
- Drive from Craigie Leisure Centre
- 6 minutes
- Custom mouthguards
- Made from your own scan
- Trauma appointments
- Same-day where possible
- Best time to book a guard
- Pre-season
Three Things Sport Does to Teeth
None of these are reasons to stop training. All three are far cheaper to prevent than to fix.
Impact — and what a real mouthguard does
A mouthguard does not just cushion the teeth. It spreads the force of a blow across the whole arch and, importantly, keeps the lower jaw from slamming into the upper, which is a mechanism in concussion as well as dental fracture. That only works if the guard actually stays in place. Boil-and-bite guards from the chemist loosen within weeks, so players push them out with their tongue or simply stop wearing them. A custom guard is made from a scan of your teeth, holds its shape for a season, and costs a small fraction of repairing a broken front tooth — which is a lifetime of replacement crowns starting in your teens.
Erosion from sports drinks and gels
Sports drinks sit around pH 3, which is acidic enough to soften enamel within minutes. The damage is not decay — it is a gradual thinning that makes front teeth look translucent at the edges and back teeth develop shallow cupped hollows. It is painless until it is advanced, and it is not reversible. Sipping slowly across a two-hour training session is the worst possible pattern, because the acid never gets a chance to be neutralised. Drinking it quickly, rinsing with water afterwards and not brushing for half an hour makes a genuine difference.
Dry mouth from hard training
Mouth-breathing through intense exercise dries out saliva, and saliva is the mouth's own defence system — it buffers acid and re-mineralises enamel between meals. Athletes training long hours frequently have drier mouths than they realise, and combined with a carbohydrate-heavy fuelling strategy that produces decay rates that surprise people who consider themselves extremely healthy. Endurance athletes are a well-documented case of this.
Chlorine, for the squad swimmers
Properly balanced pool water is not a problem. Improperly balanced water — a pool running too acidic — can etch enamel over hundreds of hours of exposure, producing a characteristic yellowish-brown staining on the front teeth known as swimmers' calculus. It affects people doing serious hours in the water, not the occasional lap swimmer, and it is worth mentioning at your check-up if you train daily.
What We Offer Craigie Patients
Sports-related work and everything else a household needs.
Dental Trauma
Knocked-out, loosened or fractured teeth from sport. Call immediately — for a knocked-out adult tooth the first thirty minutes matter more than anything else.
Check-ups and Prevention
Including erosion monitoring, which needs the same dentist comparing year to year to spot early.
Repairing Chipped Teeth
Composite bonding rebuilds a chipped front tooth in one visit and can be reshaped later as the tooth ages.
Digital Scanning
How your custom mouthguard is made, and how we track whether erosion is progressing between visits.
Whitening
Effective on surface staining. Not appropriate where the discolouration is actually enamel loss — we check first.
Implants
For teeth lost to an old sporting injury, including the front tooth that was knocked out at fifteen and has been a bridge ever since.
Tooth Knocked Out at Training? Do This Now
The next thirty minutes decide whether that tooth survives. Read this before you need it — nobody reads instructions with a bleeding mouth.
- Pick the tooth up by the crown, never the root
- Do not scrub it or use water — rinse in milk or saliva only
- Push it gently back into the socket and bite on a clean cloth
- If you cannot reinsert it, keep it in a cup of milk
- Baby teeth are never reinserted — go straight to a dentist instead
- Call (08) 9401 8060 while you are on your way
From Craigie Patients
Son took an elbow at footy on Saturday, front tooth out on the grass. Milk, phone call, seen first thing Monday after the on-call advice on the weekend. Tooth is still in his head two years later.
I swim squad five mornings a week and had no idea the sports drink was the problem. Changed nothing about my training, just when and how I drink it. Erosion has not moved since.
Two boys, two custom guards each season. Cheaper than one broken tooth and they actually keep them in, which never happened with the chemist ones.
Sports and Dental Questions From Craigie
How much better is a custom mouthguard, really?
Substantially, and the difference is retention rather than thickness. A custom guard is made from a scan of your own teeth, so it clips into place and stays there while you talk, breathe and get hit. A boil-and-bite guard is moulded roughly and loosens as it is chewed, so within a few weeks most players are pushing it around with their tongue, taking it out to catch breath, or leaving it in the bag. A guard that is not in your mouth protects nothing. Given a knocked-out front tooth in a teenager means a lifetime of replacement crowns, it is the cheapest insurance in junior sport.
How often does a child's mouthguard need replacing?
Every season for a growing child, and check it mid-season too. Children's jaws grow and adult teeth keep arriving through the primary school years, so a guard made in March may not fit properly by August. An adult guard lasts several seasons if it is not chewed, rinsed after use and kept in its case out of a hot car — heat is what warps them, and a guard left on a dashboard in a Perth summer is finished.
My child plays basketball and netball, not footy. Do they need a guard?
Yes. Basketball is consistently among the worst sports for dental injuries in Australian data, because elbows are at face height and there is no protective culture around mouthguards the way there is in football codes. Netball, hockey, skateboarding, BMX and water polo are all in the same category. The common factor is not tackling, it is uncontrolled contact with a hard object at head height.
Should I stop drinking sports drinks?
For most people training at Craigie Leisure Centre, plain water is genuinely sufficient and the sports drink is doing nothing except supplying acid and sugar. If you are doing endurance work where the carbohydrate matters, do not sip it steadily across the session — that keeps your mouth acidic for hours. Drink it in a few larger amounts, rinse with water afterwards, and wait thirty minutes before brushing, because brushing softened enamel is what actually scrubs it away.
What does dental erosion look like before it is serious?
The earliest sign is usually that the front teeth start looking slightly transparent at the biting edges, because the enamel is thinning enough to let the dark of the mouth show through. Back teeth develop shallow dished-out hollows on the biting surfaces, and older fillings can start to stand slightly proud of the tooth around them as the enamel wears down past them. None of it hurts at that stage. It is exactly the kind of thing a dentist who has seen your teeth every six months for five years notices and a new dentist does not.
A tooth got pushed sideways rather than knocked out. Is that urgent?
Yes, treat it the same as a knocked-out tooth and come in immediately. A tooth displaced in its socket has damaged the ligament holding it and possibly the blood supply to the nerve. Repositioning and splinting it promptly gives it a real chance; leaving it a week often does not. Do not try to push it back into line yourself — you can do more damage. Keep the mouth still, avoid chewing on it, and call us.
My teeth hurt after a hard session in the pool. Why?
Most often it is sensitivity from exposed dentine where enamel has thinned, which cold water then hits directly. It can also be sinus-related, or clenching — many people clench through hard efforts without noticing. Worth having looked at rather than living with, because the fix depends entirely on which of those it is, and a desensitising toothpaste is only the answer for one of them.
Can I book an appointment around training?
We open at 8:00am Monday to Thursday, which suits people coming off an early squad session, and our last slots run to 5:00pm, 4:00pm on Friday. Tell us your training pattern and we will work with it rather than offering you the next free slot. For families with several children in different sports, we will block consecutive appointments so it is one trip.
Ready to Get Started?
Book your appointment today and take the first step towards a healthier, more confident smile. Our friendly team is here to help!
New patients welcome • Same-day appointments available
Also Serving
Suburbs neighbouring Craigie.