Understanding Impacted Teeth
and What Wisdom Teeth Are?
(Part 1)
Wisdom teeth are the third molars at the back of your mouth. They’re the last set of your molars or permanent teeth to erupt or breach through the gums.
Through the process of evolution, they’ve become vestiges of a time when humans had longer, larger jaws many hundreds or thousands of years ago.
These extra molars are vestiges of the past, like the appendix (although later studies were able to determine that the appendix stores away healthy types of gut bacteria that would otherwise get changed by antibiotics overuse or intestinal illness).
It’s for this reason that this second set of wisdom teeth—most of us have four wisdom teeth, two at the upper jaw and two at the lower jaw—tend to become impacted.
There’s not enough space for these teeth to emerge and develop like other molars, leading to complications like impaction.
What are Impacted Wisdom Teeth?
Third molars or wisdom teeth become impacted when they’re not able to erupt or emerge from underneath the gums like your other teeth could because there’s not enough space left in your jaw or mouth.
These teeth erupt or break through the gums between the ages of 17 and 25 to replace the placeholder milk or baby teeth there.
There are times when wisdom teeth appear to align with other teeth without causing problems, particularly, if you have a wide enough jaw to accommodate them. However, not all jaws are equal.
Wisdom teeth impaction—wisdom teeth ending up too big to erupt, causing them to become partially or fully trapped in the jawbone and gums—has become quite the commonplace problem among modern adults.
Impacted third molars can painfully push and put pressure on neighboring molars, gums, and nerves or leave space that can cause bacterial infection and tooth decay.
The most common issues they cause include dental caries, gum disease (gingivitis and periodontitis) and oral/dental infection. To be cotinued