Source : broomfielddentists
Removal of wisdom teeth is a rite of passage for many people in their late teens & early twenties. But why don’t they come in childhood with the rest of our permanent teeth?
The answer comes down to the development of the child. There is not enough space in a child’s jaw for wisdom teeth to fit. But as a child grows, their jaw grows too & there is more room for wisdom teeth to emerge, according to an October 2021 study in the journal Science Advances.
However, many modern human jaws do not grow long enough for the teeth of wisdom come without problems, and that is why the removal of the wisdom teeth is so common. Again, this is due to the development of the child. Ancient humans ate a diet rich in hard nuts, raw vegetables, gamey meats & other hard foods. Following this diet when a young man is actually makes jaw grow longer, Julia Boughner, an anthropologist at the University of Saskatchewan college of Medicine in Canada, wrote in The Conversation. But as people in industrialized countries switched to eating softer foods, we stopped maxing-out our jaw growth potential.
Another reason why wisdom teeth appear in early adulthood is that they aren’t needed until then. When ancient people grind down or lost their molars due to hard food, wisdom teeth – the 3rd set of molars – took their place. “They are meant as a kind of backup for someone who may have lost another molar-tooth,” said Steven Kupferman, oral surgeon at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles. But since most people don’t lose their molars when they’re young, wisdom teeth wait until adulthood. In other words, if you lost or flattened your molars as a child or teenager, your wisdom teeth are programmed to erupt to fill the gap.
The first set of permanent molars, or teeth at the back of the mouth designed to crush food, first appear around age 6, when a baby begins to lose baby teeth. At age 12, second molars emerge, which serve as a backup for 6-year-old molars in case they develop cavities, Kupferman told. Third molars, or wisdom teeth, come in between the ages of 17 to 21.
These days, dentists often remove wisdom teeth because their appearance can cause pain in crowded mouths. Even if a person does not experience any pain, removing of wisdom teeth in adulthood can prevent health problems later in life, such as gum infections. Dentists & oral surgeons usually do not remove wisdom teeth as a preventive measure past-age of 27, as the risk of complications, such as damage to nearby nerves, increases. However, people can get removed their wisdom teeth after this age, usually due to issues such as pain.
Most people have 32 teeth, including 4 wisdom teeth. But some have more or less, & some people may miss their wisdom teeth completely, Kupferman said. Others may have a 4th molar, called a paramolar, behind each wisdom tooth. There is hardly ever enough space for paramolars in the modern human mouth, so they are always removed along with the wisdom teeth.
However, not everyone get their wisdom teeth removed. “Even today when people have their teeth extracted for braces purposes, they often keep their wisdom teeth because there is enough space for them,” Kupferman said.
However, keeping wisdom teeth can lead to down-line issues. Not all wisdom teeth pop from the gums in your late teens and early twenties. But as a person ages get older & their gums recede, their wisdom teeth may appear. In this case, the wisdom teeth only come through the gums partway, so they are prone to tooth decay and therefore need to be removed, Kupferman said.
“There are naysayers who [claim] that all surgeons are just trying to make money by removing wisdom teeth, but I think if you know teenagers and have only seen a few x-rays you know that there’s a good reason to remove a 3rd molar, ”said Kupferman.
