Every time I give a patient the dark and dreaded news that their wisdom tooth has to be extracted, I’m always presented with the same question time and time again: “ Why does anyone even get wisdom teeth anymore if we have to end up getting them removed?!”

• Strangely enough, wisdom teeth don’t serve a functional purpose in modern human beings anymore. In fact, for most people, it isn’t even part of their functional occlusion; meaning it doesn’t really come into contact with the opposing teeth in order to be used for chewing food.
• The presence of wisdom teeth is traced back to our early ancestors who had a diet of tough, coarse food such as meats, nuts, roots and leaves (and no knives to cut things up with!) which resulted in broad, large jaws and strong molar teeth. All three molars, including wisdom teeth, were vital to the function of our ancestors.
• In modern times, soft, processed food became more and more common; we no longer had to deal with hard, coarse and chewy food. Therefore, what we eat now is what changed our jaws over the years, they became less broad and smaller, leaving little to no space for the full and proper eruption of our wisdom teeth.
• Consequently, most wisdom teeth are removed because of impaction in bone, awkward eruption angles and due to the fact that decay is very common in them because they are too far back for proper brushing and care.

So there it is! Don’t blame your dentist for needing a wisdom tooth extraction, let’s blame our ancestors instead!