MOST people know a handful of things about wisdom tooth. The name comes from the late appearance of these teeth in a person’s life. These third set of molars usually show up during a person’s late teenage years or early twenties. We normally think of wisdom tooth only when they need to be removed and when they have made your jaw swell up like a chipmunk’s pouches. But why do we have wisdom tooth when they seem to only cause problems? [ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”2,3,5″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ]
Wisdom tooth play a more important role then, than they do now. Anthropologists theorize that the third set of molars appear because of evolutionary traits when primitive humans were hunter-gatherers and mostly ate raw foods. They would need some pretty powerful choppers to cut up the food and that was where the wisdom tooth came in. But today, our palates are a little more refined and we prefer softer foods.
Much like the appendix, sinuses and coccyx (tailbone), the wisdom tooth is part of the human body but they have lost some or all of their “ancestral” function. They are vestigial organs and this merely means that with time and evolution, they are no longer required. They’re not just redundant but are also problematic. The most common problem with wisdom tooth is periodontal (gum) disease. Periodontal disease is an inflammation of tissue that comes from a partially erupted wisdom tooth and it mostly affects young adults. A wisdom tooth is extracted to prevent future problems and researchers today are attempting to find a solution to keep wisdom tooth from growing altogether. [/ihc-hide-content]
