how many people still have them!

I still have one. The other was removed when I was in my late 30s, when it became painful.

I agree with you -- don't have them removed unless they are causing problems.

of the way it came in or was crowding an issue? My sister's came in all sideways and stuff and caused a good bit of gum problems.

Crowding was not an issue. It caused pain about three times over a period of ten-twelve years. The first time was when I was 25 and studying for the bar. I toughed through it because I couldn't take time off. The pain went away even though I never saw a dentist. Similar situation a few years later - pain for a while and then it went away. The last time, the pain was more intense and I had referred pain in my ear. When I went to the doctor, she told me the ear pain was referred from the tooth and I had to see a dentist. After local anesthesia, the offending wisdom tooth was removed.

Good luck on whatever decision you make.

I've also been told they can cause sinus problems down the line.

I only had three to begin with, one never grew at all.
Periodically dentists tell me to take out the two remaining ones, but I just ignore them. What is the point of removing them if they don't bother you?

you never had any problems. I was wondering if this were more common than dentists admit.

I had three total (one never grew), so now I have two left. So far no problems with either one of the two.

money.

"Don't ask the barber if you need a haircut."

The top ones are so deep up in my skull, that they almost look like they are above my eyes.

Weird.

The dentist said that there was no reason to bother with them.

they don't drop down AND they don't cause pain.

Ironically, because I was supposed to have them out, had a scheduling issue so I pushed it almost a full year and then they came in and obliterated my other teeth. So I have them because they're like the only molars I have.

I think they used to put hardware in to correct space but since my wisdom teeth came in, that never became an issue.

When the wisdom teeth came in, several of my other molars broke and had to be extracted.

It is too close to the vein on my jaw that if I were to take them off, I might lose feeling.

So no, I still have them.

Interesting!

Ultimately, I lost all of my teeth by my late forties because of a genetic condition in which
I was losing them from the inside out: xrays showed they were all becoming hollow inside.
Dentists don't know why that happens, or didn't at the time, but sometimes there seems
to be a genetic factor, and my pattern of tooth loss did follow that of my Mom and both her
sisters.

As I was losing other teeth I was so very, very glad that I had my wisdom teeth to chew with.
Incredibly glad.

For a 'doctor' to suggest removing a perfectly healthy body part because it 'might' cause trouble
some day is ridiculous. All 52 of your teeth might cause trouble some day, so yank all of them now?
How about your liver, your pancreas, your gall bladder, your appendix? That is the most unscientific,
ridiculous, and perhaps simply blatantly greedy proposal I can imagine.

but I just started wondering why we do this and what the odds are. My current dentist doesn't seem to be pushing it. He just wanted us to see a surgeon for the panoramic xray to see how many and how the teeth were coming in. I know they would rather not have people in pain later, but he has not asked about mine since I started going to him.

Glad you made use of yours!!!

Humans have 32 teeth, not 52.

The lower right one was high enough that the oral surgeon could get it out, but ten years later if I scratch at the right corner of my mouth it feels like someone's tickling the gums where the tooth was.

The day I went to get them removed, the surgeon said that if he went for the other three teeth, I could lose all feeling in that quadrant of the mouth if he damaged the nerve.

were you planning on having all of them out at the same time? Do the remaining ones bother you at all?

They're really far down there, it seems.

The plan was to pull them all in one shot. But on top of the oral surgeon saying "Nope!" my insurance company had decreed that the anesthetic for the procedure was "not necessary" and wouldn't cover it. So I had to shell out $170.00 to get knocked out.

I find that to be cruel and unusual.

I feel soooooo lucky with this particular genetic "blessing" from my mom's side - perfectly straight teeth, no wisdom teeth.

I can't see for sh*t, though. Can't have it all, I guess.

nobody in my family had braces and we all have good teeth. I know of 2 sisters and 1 brother who had wisdom teeth out but I don't know about any of the others.

My husband had 2 wisdom teeth out.

evolved

Also, LASIK. It's been wonderful.

That's what my husband said about the younger son: he had evolved.

and he was thrilled about it!

You are very lucky!

TYY

I had it removed, because it was coming out the side of my gums. It was painless, which surprised me given all the wisdom tooth horror stories I have heard over the years.

My mouth is actually a bit small in size. Even as an adult they have always used child size plates to do impressions.

So as soon as the Wisdoms starting growing they were causing me massive issues. I think I was 17 when they were removed.

like some above have stated, you risk nerve damage if they get too far out. Did you have all 4?

I have also had 2 regular molars removed (my molars are huge in size) and 2 of my bicupsids. I only have 24 teeth in my mouth (32 is what we should have). There are dentists out there that think we need to toss braces on the kid and force all the teeth to fit in the mouth. My dentist really felt that if I had all 32 teeth in my mouth that there would be serioius issue. I never had braces, only retainers.

and none on the right. I am 52 and no trouble do they give me.

I had the two on the right removed when I was 22, they were impacted and full of cavities.

I have metal from fillings as a young kid but the wisdom teeth have always been ok.

I skipped the dentist's from about 18-22yrs. old because my mom quit making appointments and I never really thought about it. So realized I needed a cleaning and decided to go to a new dentist because I never cared for my childhood dentist. The guy recommended having them removed with the usual, you don't really need them, possible overcrowding and the fact that many people do no do so well at keeping them clean because they are hard to reach. So I took his advice. No regrets.

I'd say if your son has good oral hygiene (as most younger people do these days) and understands that he must make an effort to reach back there with his brush and keep them clean then let him keep them if he wants. If he truly doesn't care and they are a simple extraction (not impacted) then I think I would go with the dentist's advice and have them removed since he doesn't have the lowers to complement them. They really are just one more crevice for food to get trapped without the lowers to use to chew.

He'll go back to the dentist in December. I wonder how far down (if at all) they will be by then.

Mine were all very simple extractions. My dentist doesn't do extractions so he sent me to an oral surgeon and since I was getting all 4 out decided to "go under" for the process. It apparently took less than 15 minutes but of course the anesthesia takes at least an hour to fully wake up from and quite a bit longer before one is functioning normally.

And I wanted to add that I did have crowding in my lower jaw which was one of the reasons that I decided it was a good choice for me. My new dentist wasn't pushy but definitely recommended it, I actually switched from him to his partner after my first visit because his partner was older and more laid back. He retired and I chose the new guy who joined the practice. It is not that the original dentist wasn't a good dentist but he just took dentistry way too serious and wanted everything to be perfect every time. The ones I chose are more, "Ok, we'll patch things up for now and you can decide if you want to do more later." Their patches have always worked fine for 10 years at a time until routine replacement type things come up. I'm been very happy with my dentists.

Lucky!

But the rest, I don't remember.

My dentist noticed that the bottom two were causing crowding and referred me to a oral surgeon to have them removed. The oral surgeon mentioned that the top ones may or may not cause issues down the line, and asked me if I wanted the top ones removed too. I figured there wasn't any point risking an extra week down the road of eating soft foods so I said yes.

I can't imagine any reason to do this more than once!

First, I was born with the maternal side of the family's crowded, crooked bottom front teeth. I sort of took it as our distinction.

20 yrs later, coming up on my completion of the Navy, the Navy dentist decided to send me off with a farewell gift of pulling the upper and lower on one side. Totally slickly pulled, slid right out. As a civilian I thought things needed to be balanced, so got the other side done, and the civilian dentist almost literally braced the yanking with his foot on the chair. (Well, I *did* say "almost literally.)

In the passing years, because of all the space down there, apparently the whole row of teeth stretched out, because one fine day I noticed that my formerly crooked bottom gnawers were perfectly straight. Fine, you say. Although there are a couple of slivers of gaps, which look black but are actually SPACE allowing the viewer to look at the lack of light inside.

Anyway, forty years later, I noticed some cracking sounds in my jaws, like knuckles-cracking, and how sometimes I had to consciously perform the closing together of the uppers and lowers. I asked my doctor (not a dentist) and he said that, yes, the removal of some of the dudes means a realignment of how things fit together and there can be some arcane condition to develop.

Everybody's different.

I'm just feeling around with my tongue and I feel some space still on the right side whereas the left is a little tighter. But I had room for the wisdom teeth and they look pretty much at home now.

Every dentist I've consulted in my adult life has promptly outlined a course of treatment that would cost me between $30K and $50K out of pocket, and they pitch the entire process as if every single element of it is vital and unavoidable. I'm sure that all dentists aren't like that, but...

Also, I have my wisdom teeth in a cup on my shelf.

and he does CRAZY things like only charge xrays for 2 of us instead of all 4 of us because we don't have insurance and pay everything up front. And my husband keeps going to him because he doesn't push cosmetic stuff like our old dentist did.

Do you have 2 or 4 teeth in that cup?

And one still in my head.

I've been lucky to have good dentists, in terms of "bedside manner" and general skill, but they've been a little too quick to see dollar signs when they've assembled the "plan" for my mouth.

I'm not a dentist, so I don't know how best to describe their present status, but all have erupted from my gums (years ago) and do not cause me any problems that I'm aware of. I make regular dentist visits and my dentist has never recommended doing anything to them. I do have one back molar missing on my bottom jaw and two on my upper (one each side) which presumably created some room for the wisdom teeth. They did cause me some pain when they were moving, some years ago, but it was not serious enough to need attention. They have not hurt in at least a decade now.

who does not push. That's one thing I hated for more than ten years with the same dentist. He was also pushing bleaching, mouth guards, etc. for me and my husband and it just got old. We brush well and have good teeth, although I do not floss like I should, and we always have our teeth cleaned.

Thanks for sharing.

Extremely painful. Only good thing about it was, I got to eat ice cream for two days. Nothing else was soft enough.

but he eats like a horse so I don't know how much fun it would be.

Yeah, I was super-smart as a kid. I had to have them removed by an oral surgeon in the hospital at 18. This was during ray-gun's first year in office. We had to do it in the hospital so the insurance would cover it. I really didn't have any pain, but the dentist freaked when he saw my x-ray. The two extra were on top and pointing backwards. They said I was most likely going to have big problems later if I didn't take care of it right away. I couldn't speak for a few days after the surgery, but it went well, and I never had a problem after that.

6????

I can see why they would want yours out.

I thought maybe I was part cave man when I was a kid. I'm sure there's some medical journal with my x-rays in it somewhere.

I had one removed when I was 28 because it had come in and was causing problems with other teeth.

My two lower wisdom teeth never caused any problems, so I was not going to go through the pain and cost to have them removed. Last February, while at the dentist, one broke off, so I was forced to do something. It still took 3 months to get the nerve to go through with it.

I still have one upper that will remain as it is not anywhere that it will cause problems and would be too difficult to get out.

If they are not a problem, wait!

Was it just during a cleaning?

I have several crowns due to the same problem.

In my early 30's they grew out and at odd angles. My dentist said it would take 2 visits. At the first visit to remove 2 teeth, he decided to do all 4. After the teeth were out they gave me a prescription for some wild painkillers and bundled me into a taxi. The Driver was given instructions.

The Driver stopped at the nearest pharmacy and I staggered in. Naturally they refused to fill the prescription as I was obviously under the influence of something. I guess the Driver suspected something and came in and yelled out "He's just had 4 wisdom teeth pulled!"

They filled the prescription right away.

but that's a great story. And I actually wondered what people did who didn't have help. I took my roommate to get hers out, changed her gauze and made ice packs for her. I think she mainly slept.

I had room for them because I had four permanent teeth removed at the age of 13 for braces.

Once the rest of them were fixed, there was still room for the wisdom teeth and they came in with no problems.

I see absolutely no reason why they should be removed.

Because it makes perfect sense. It just seems like some dentists are ready to remove them no matter what.

Small jaw, all 4 wisdom teeth coming in crooked. The chance that she would have impacted teeth was huge and her lovely straight teeth from braces would have been at risk of getting ruined should we have kept them in.

and I'm old enough for Social Security. There's no point in having them out if they aren't causing problems, and mine never did.

this is way more common than the dentists let on.

And I am a senior. Never had any trouble at all.

I think it's a trend nowadays, the preventative pulling. A money-maker.

Because they ain't broke, so I haven't fixed 'em.

the dentist told me if I didn't, they'd grow into my cheeks. So, off to the oral surgeon I went. He pulled one side one year and the other side the next.

They just rotted out. Had them all extracted.

They do not cause me any problems at all

Even the broken part????

Since I was having them pulled and insurance covered it, I had all four pulled. The gaze tasted bad.

I'd let it go until there is a problem. Maybe it will never be a problem like it was for you. If so, then you are very lucky.

Obviously, Nature, Destiny, or Somebody is sending me a message.

-- Mal

My teeth are sort of tight. My teeth hurt after flossing.

my teeth are tighter on top where I don't have wisdom teeth. I have to use a waxed floss and I break it anyway.

so I use a tape floss. You should try it; so much easier and no breakage or leaving bits stuck between teeth.

That is what I use. Otherwise it just breaks.

as I recall, I had some jaw ache and a doctor sent me to the dentist

Hygienist has to work to get to the back for cleaning and my teeth are a bit tight but no issues.

Always need attachment points in the future. Ya never know.

I'll be 30 in October, and no wisdom teeth issues so far.

Every dentist I've ever been to has been intrigued by them.

When I was 18, the dentist strongly recommended that I get my wisdom teeth extracted but I refused. I suspected he wanted to extract money from my parent's insurance company before I lost coverage at 19. One of my wisdom teeth is only partially in and ocassionally the gums surrounding it get inflamed. I am 50 years old and this has only happened a few times over the years. Overall my dental health is excellent even though I rarely see a dentist.