Is It Smart To Keep Your Wisdom Teeth?

So you’ve survived high school and are now entering your young adult life. You’re completely out of braces and have been taking great care of your teeth, like brushing and flossing daily. Then one day you start to feel some pain in your lower gums towards the back of your mouth. You notice some swelling in your gums too. You’re totally confused and have no idea why you’re experiencing this pain. As you eliminate the possible reasons, like, do I have an infection, or maybe I have a cavity, or is it an allergic reaction; but you still can’t figure out why. Last resort, you come in to see your dentist. And that’s when you get your aha moment; it’s your wisdom tooth. You’re feeling a little relieved and think to yourself, at least it wasn’t anything serious. But is it?

Why Do We Have Wisdom Teeth

Your wisdom teeth are your third and last set of molars. Some people actually never get wisdom teeth. But for most, they will have 3 to 4 wisdom teeth. In general, your wisdom teeth are used to help chew and break through tough meats and coarse food. For our ancestors, they were an essential part of survival. But today, with the advancement in utensils like forks and knives, our wisdom teeth are not as important. In fact, we don’t even need them.

Problems Relating To Wisdom Teeth

Because your wisdom teeth are the last ones to erupt, there is an assortment of problems that could occur as they are coming in. Whether you’ve had orthodontic treatment or not, your teeth have all moved around and are now settled in place. You can imagine how disruptive it can be for more teeth to erupt, let alone one that might be coming in sideways.

Here are 5 common problems that are related to your wisdom teeth:

1. Not enough room. You may or may not have had orthodontic treatment, but the existing space is not big enough. Braces will cause movement in your teeth. If you had severe crowding that was corrected, your teeth may have needed to spread further out, taking up any available space. When the wisdom teeth erupt, it can cause your teeth to shift again, undoing any orthodontic treatment and changing your bite.

2. Your Jaw is too small. The human jaw has become much smaller through evolution, however, the number of teeth in our mouth hasn’t changed. For many, their jaw just isn’t big enough to support the additional wisdom teeth.

3. Irregular eruption. Your wisdom tooth is coming in at an awkward angle, or is laying on its side. When this happens, the wisdom teeth will cause harm to the teeth in front of them.

4. Pain or swelling of the gums. The wisdom tooth has developed below the gums but is trapped. This will cause chewing and biting to be painful.

5. Partial eruption. This is when only a small portion of the wisdom tooth is showing. Food will get trapped and proper maintenance of that tooth like brushing and flossing can be difficult. This will lead to cavities and other infections developing over time.

When Do I Need To Remove My Wisdom Teeth

The fact is, not every wisdom tooth needs to be removed. Sometimes wisdom teeth can develop and erupt completely normal without causing any impact to any of the neighboring teeth. When this happens, there is no reason to have them removed. But that’s more of an anomaly than the norm. Most of the time complications do occur with wisdom teeth, and removal is needed to prevent further complications. The most ideal time to remove wisdom teeth is when the roots are still developing, typically around the ages of 17 and 21. The bones around the wisdom tooth are not as hard and removal is less traumatic with faster healing time. Wisdom teeth extractions are one of the most common dental procedures today. There are many benefits to removing them early and is clearly the SMART thing to do!

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Written by Dr. Kim H. Nguyen

Owner of Mint Dental OC and is a leading dentist in Southern California.