Why do wisdom teeth appear so late in life?

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Were humans ever able to make use of these late-blooming teeth?

 

People in their late teens and early 20s often get wisdom teeth extracted as a rite of passage. Why don't they erupt throughout childhood and the rest of our adult teeth?

 

The solution has to do with the growth of the youngster. Wisdom teeth can't grow in a child's jaw because there isn't enough room. A study published in Science Advances in October 2021 found that when a child's jaw grows, there is a greater capacity for wisdom teeth to sprout.

 

Many modern human jaws, however, are not long enough for wisdom teeth to come in without difficulty, which is why wisdom teeth removal is so frequent nowadays. That's because children's brains develop at different rates. Hard nuts, raw vegetables, gamey meats, and other tough foods were staples of ancient human diets. As a child, following this diet can lengthen the jaw, according to anthropologist Julia Boughner of the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine, Canada. However, the transition to softer diets in developed countries has prevented us from reaching our full jaw growth potential.

 

Another reason wisdom teeth erupt in adolescence is that their presence is not required until this stage of development. In ancient times, people ate rough food and ground it down or lost teeth. Wisdom teeth, the third set of molars, would fill in for lost molars when people ate rough food and ground it down. As an oral surgeon at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, Steven Kupferman explained, "They're meant as kind of a backup for someone who may have lost another molar tooth." In most cases, wisdom teeth don't appear until later in life because most people don't lose their molars until they are teenagers or adults. In other words, if you had wisdom teeth when you were younger, they would have erupted to fill in the void.

 

At age 6, a child begins to lose their first set of primary molars or teeth in the back of their mouth that are used to grind food. Live Science spoke with Dr. Kupferman on the importance of developing the second molars around 12. Around the ages of 17 to 21, a person's third molars, or wisdom teeth, emerge.

 

Dentists frequently remove wisdom teeth due to the discomfort they might cause when they erupt in crowded mouths. A person's health can be saved even if they do not feel discomfort by having wisdom teeth removed as a young adult. Dentists and oral surgeons generally do not remove wisdom teeth as a preventative measure after age 27 since the risk of problems, such as nerve injury, increases. However, even after reaching this age, wisdom teeth might be removed for various reasons, most commonly pain.

 

Four wisdom teeth are present in the majority of the population. Kupferman added that some people have more or fewer wisdom teeth, while others may not have any at all. Some people have a fourth molar, a paramolar, behind each wisdom tooth. Because the modern human mouth does not have adequate room for paramolars, they are always extracted along with the wisdom teeth.

 

However, not all people have their wisdom teeth removed. Even today, people often keep their wisdom teeth because there is enough room for them; Kupferman said when people have their teeth pulled for braces.

 

Maintaining wisdom teeth can have long-term consequences. Not all wisdom teeth erupt throughout the late adolescent or early adolescent years. However, wisdom teeth may become visible as a person ages and gums recede. According to Kupferman, wisdom teeth are prone to cavities because they only partially erupt from the gums.

 

When it comes to wisdom tooth extractions, "There's a lot of skepticism out there, but I think if you know any kids and you've seen even one or two X-rays, you know that there's solid cause to remove third molars," Kupferman said.

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/why-wisdom-teeth-emerge-late

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/sikat-gigi-pasta-gigi-kesehatan-3191097/

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