Imagine - turning 18 is quite the milestone, most of us are done with School forever, eager to enter onto a new phase of life – Adulthood. But wait, if you count all the teeth in your mouth, chances are there would be 28 teeth in most of us. Didn’t school just teach us that an adult would have 32 teeth in total?
After the age
of 18 a tooth starts ripping its way out behind your “supposed last tooth”. Those
my friends are wisdom teeth. It comes quite late in life, between 18 and 90. 4
of the wisdom teeth decide to enter late in the mouth at different times,
probably delayed by the traffic.
It’s not easy
for these teeth to simply tear the gums and find its place. The gums above the
wisdom tooth are very tough, common site for swelling and sometimes infection. Most
times the erupted teeth are already crowded and have filled the space in the
upper and lower jaw. The third molar is quite accommodating, it tries to slide in
sideways into any empty space. (This usually happens in the lower jaw).
Many a times
it’s not so wise a tooth. If the tooth is tilted or half in, it’s unlikely that
it’ll ever come out. Such times it would be wiser to remove this tooth to
preserve the others.
So, to all
grown-ups out there, do visit your dentist regularly so that, we could keep an
eye on those wise little teeth.
Smiling off,
Radhika.
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