When you work with the DOM in TypeScript, you often need to determine the exact type of an element before accessing its specific properties. Type guards are functions or constructs that help you narrow the type of a variable within a certain block of code. This is especially important in DOM manipulation, where nodes can be of many types, but you might want to access properties that only exist on certain elements, such as value on an HTMLInputElement. Using type guards, you can check at runtime whether a node is of a specific type, allowing TypeScript to understand and enforce the correct type within your code block.