I am in pain! My wisdom tooth is giving me fits, it is in the back corner of my mouth cockeyed and barely poking through and it hurts! I went to the dentist yesterday and he gave me antibiotics, pain meds, and "black licorice" mouth rinse. I know, it's weird, but it really does taste kinda like black licorice. I have been hurting all this week and didn't sleep hardly at all on Wednesday night. Thursday evening (last night) I attended a bridal shower for a friend that is getting married Saturday and I wasn't in pain, what a relief, I made it through the night with sleep to boot! Well this morning it's back to throbbing and giving me grief, I feel like Tom Hanks in Cast Away when he pulls his own tooth with an ice skate...believe me, I have considered it. I go to the oral surgeon in two weeks to have it cut out of there. For now, I will suffer because I don't like taking pain medicine unless I absolutely have to and the dentist told me not to drive if I took it. Wedding rehearsal tonight and a wedding tomorrow, I want to be somewhat pain free so I can enjoy it, I'm in the wedding party after all and I want to have a legitimate smile on my face. I'll post pics and you can guess...And why are wisdom teeth even called wisdom teeth? Why do we have them? Maybe in case the other ones fall out they will, in extreme cases, come in to replace them, ha sure! Well...I found an answer.
Why are they called Wisdom Teeth?
The last teeth to develop and erupt into the jaws are called the third molars. Third molars usually erupt in the late teen years, which coincides with passage into adulthood and is referred to by some as the age of wisdom; hence "wisdom teeth". Unfortunately, the wisdom teeth are now usually trying to erupt into a jaw that is too small.
Wisdom teeth used to serve a useful purpose, but are now considered vestigial organs. A vestige is a degenerative or imperfectly formed organ or structure having little or no utility, but in the earlier stage of development of a species performed a useful function. The reasons that wisdom teeth are now "outdated" are many. Until quite recently, our diet included mostly very coarse food, as well as impurities such as dirt and sand. This coarseness would abrade teeth so significantly that they would take up less space in the jaw. Permanent teeth were also frequently lost at an early age, which would create more space in the jaw. Because the diet was so coarse and hard to chew, the jaw itself would develop into a larger bone because of this constant workout. All of these factors would create more space for the wisdom teeth when they came in.
The heavily processed diet of today does not produce the tooth abrasion or jaw development that we used to see. Modern dentistry has pretty much eliminated significant loss of permanent teeth at an early age. This leaves us with too many teeth and not enough jaw. The wisdom teeth still develop as they always have, but they have no where to go. When this happens, the teeth are considered "impacted," meaning that they are not in normal position and function.
Besides serving no useful function, the impacted teeth will often cause damage because they cannot be cleaned properly and can collect food debris, bacteria and plaque around them. This can result in tooth decay, gum disease, infection and abscess of not only the wisdom teeth, but of the molars next door and of the surrounding gum tissue. The molars in front of the wisdom teeth are sometimes lost because of cavities and gum disease caused by the inability to clean the wisdom teeth properly. Cyst formation and other destructive pathology are also seen around impacted wisdom teeth.
Fun Fact Friday, woohoo, I can't believe you read that...
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