Delta Dental of TN is giving free mouth guards to athletes under 10 to protect their smile.

Delta Dental of TN is giving free mouth guards to athletes under 10 to protect their smile.

Coaches & League commissioners apply by April 25th.

Let's chat all month long.

Throughout the month of april, her friends, it tilted dental tennessee are doing something really cool for our youngsters all across of all interstate missy acosta is here in the csv vice president of brand strateg for delta dental.

First of all missy acosta good morning and thanks for your time because folks are wondering worse.

The delta dental office close to me or how can i get more involved with delta dental to tell you all about that here coming up i just a moment april youth sports safety month and you folks at delta dental tennessee are taking this very very serious.

Tell me about absolutely is important for kids to understand how important mouthguard is to their whatever else it is that they use for their sports.

I went there winning on shoulder pad really want young kids to get into a habit of putting mouthguard in the mouth to just gametime.

Also during this live sports today that parents are necessarily thinking about mouth guards for their children, including socce and basketball.

There are over 3 million teeth lost every year due to just incidental contact in sports.

So it's important that parents understand and kids know what to do.

That's a statistic that merits repeating three 3 million teeth knocked out every year.

Yes, and i mean singer 60 times more likely to have injury to the mouth with a mouthguard so it's really important.

And another amazing stat.

There are only about 16% kids young athletes actually wearing these mouthguard must also think about this.

Also, imagine this being your child o grandchild out there playing sports.

They get a tooth knocke out.

That situation gets compounded if they happen to be wearing braces.

It's a lot more offensive to fix.

So tell me what you're doing at delta dental tennessee to reduce that 3 million teeth knocked out your absolutely we are giving away boiling by mouthguard athletes elementary school younger 10 years old and younger.

I by mouthguard and we are doing strap strapless.

So if you're in martial arts and you don't want that strap hanging out of your mouth.

We had those for you coaches, league officials making go to our website delta dental tn.com and they can put in a request to get mouthguard and we will ship was out at no charge.

We have partnerships with the music cit bowl in nashville and the nashville predators for a numbe of years and we really want to make more parents aware of how and what this essentials care is an a while back i was talking to a couple of coaches in and around the general area and again a couple years ago that there was no law there was no hard and fast rule.

If you don't have a mouthguard you're not getting any play time, which you would think in certain land.

Today's time that that would be an automatic, it would be a given but couple years ago it was, not hopefully this will come more into the required areas that interest it's good common sense, because you do some damage to your teeth in her mouth.

He could be paying the price for the years to come ... absolutely.

And you know taking care of mouthguard is easy.

Parents need to make sure it's in a case that will keep us secure and make sure that it is now rest after practice.

A lot of times they end up in the gym bag and then there will back out at the next test to make sure those get freshened up at night wednesday with some actually soak it overnight and mouthwash and has a pressure taste the next day as well.

Missing tell me this.

How effective are these boil and bite mouthguard.

They are very effective, correct, they are very effective, especially for the younger athletes as you're getting in contact sports at the middle school, high school level and professional level.

You really want a more significant mouthguard i you can get stuck mouthguard's or custom for olde athletes is a you laugh harder.

Should the underaged appointmen by their their very expensive.

Of course, we're giving them away right now, and we just really want to encourage that parents is for their check hats off to you and the staff at delta dental.

For taking this project on a millage huge and i know there are a lot of parents grandparents, aunts and novels and the younger kids themselves are saying thank you very much missy acosta, you and i will talk soon ... sounds great so much.

If you find out more about how you and your child or your child steve get involved in this.

Check out their website