Wisdom Teeth Extraction

Yes, We Do Wisdom Tooth Extractions!

What Are Wisdom Teeth and What Should I Do About Them?

Let's talk about wisdom teeth. Humans usually have 20 baby teeth followed by 32 permanent teeth. Half of the teeth are in the upper jaw or maxilla, and half are in the lower jaw or mandible. (Great White Sharks, in comparison, have about 300 teeth.)

We have 12 molars. These are the big, squarish, relatively flat teeth that are used for grinding up tough food. So, in each quadrant or quarter of the mouth, there are normally three molars. They’re called the first, second, and third molar, counting from the front of the mouth to the back.

The third molars are called wisdom teeth. Nobody knows why they’re called that, except that those third molars come in around the age of 20, and maybe you’re wiser after all those years of grade school. Wisdom teeth don’t make you smart, and they are not an indication of your intelligence.

Wisdom Teeth Often Have To Be Pulled Or “Extracted”

They don’t always need to be extracted, but often they do for a variety of reasons. They are really like vestigial teeth, or teeth that we used and needed thousands of years ago, but we’ve evolved to need them less now. That means that often we don’t have much room in our mouths or jaws for them.

Why Do We Extract Wisdom Teeth? Here Are Some Of The Reasons:

• As our jaws have gotten smaller, wisdom teeth don’t always fit so well in our mouths. Sometimes they are painful when they are coming in or “erupting”.
• It’s really hard to do a good job keeping them clean with brushing and flossing because they’re so far back in the mouth. So, it’s not unusual to get infections around them in the gums.
• Sometimes they don’t erupt normally but grow in sideways, which is called “impaction”. When the wisdom teeth are growing under the gum line toward the front of the mouth, they may hurt, and they may also push the other teeth out of alignment creating new problems.

If you think you may have some wisdom teeth that need to come out or if you are a parent of child that has wisdom teeth creating problems, give us a call and make an appointment. We’ll figure it out together.