Dental issues from diving?

[Dive-aholic]

Look the reality is that you NEED to keep these ascents slow....It has been my extensive experience that most people cannot control their ascents well enough. You must use a computer and watch the numbers slowly change on ascent. My teeth have always been bad (soft) from birth. I have no choice in this and fluoride (against all the best advice) has not help my teeth one bit. However, I have many fillings and many from my youth, but I have been able to keep all intact through many years of diving with many differing profiles...

Cheers,

GB

Keeping ascents slow is not an issue. We teach 30fpm ascents even though one of the agencies we teach through uses 60fpm ascent rates. Decompression dives get 10fpm ascents once shallower than 100ft. While I agree that there are many recreational divers that have difficult controlling ascent rates, I don't find that an issue for more advanced divers. It's also not an issue for the students we teach because we focus on it so much. Our first couple 3 minute safety stops often end up being 10 minutes or more because we won't let our students surface without hovering at 15ft +/- a foot for 3 minutes. By the 3rd and 4th dives, we're usually doing 3 minute stops. Anyway, all that to tell you that's not the issue.

 

[DocVikingo]

Thanks. We use the Comfo-Bites, have been for several years. We may have to check into the Manta mouthpieces. However, she doesn't bite down on them to keep them in her mouth. It's just something she does subconsciously.

Hi Dive-aholic,

Agreed. The chances of this being the cause of cracks in the teeth is really reaching for it. For openers, she'd develop screaming jaw pain and likely headaches as well if she was biting down hard enough to potentially damage teeth. Second, the mouthpiece, no matter how vigorously compressed, still provides a cushioning effect.

Regards,

DocVikingo