Can wisdom teeth make your teeth crooked? The answer is no. It’s a faulty belief not based on scientific fact. I know that’s good enough for over 50 percent of you, but here’s hoping everyone will continue reading so you can back it up…
Quite frankly, it’s an old wives tale, but the notion is not that old. That’s what most dentists were being taught when I was in dental school—get those wisdom teeth out as soon as possible.
While most dentists now understand that wisdom teeth are not to blame for crowded teeth, many patients seem to have a hard time “believing” that’s not true.
“That doesn’t seem right, it has to be,” patients say.
Dentistry’s more enlightened understanding is based on facts. In 1992 Dr. Tom Southard at the University of Iowa concluded from measurements of the forces generated by unerupted wisdom teeth that those forces are not greater than forces generated by the other teeth and are too small to cause crowding of teeth. It can also be reasoned by logic and observation and is backed by hundreds of studies since.
“What else could it be?” Glad you asked.
Here is a partial list of factors that may cause crowding: density of bone, bone loss from periodontal disease, size and shape of tooth roots, intensity and direction of biting forces, clenching, grinding and detrimental chewing habits, shape and size of biting surfaces, upper and lower teeth do not interdigitate properly, improperly restored teeth, lack of proper retention after orthodontics(braces), differential growth of upper and lower jaws, “mesial drift”….
And ask yourself (or your dentist) why crowding doesn’t occur as often in upper teeth (with softer bone), and why does it happen in people who have had their wisdom teeth removed?
“But none of those apply to me,” you say.
Well, all of them apply to everyone, and unless you can measure all of these factors yourself, you have to accept that. That is what the researchers who have studied it have found. It’s important to monitor the wisdom teeth for a number of other reasons, and some of those might lead to a recommendation for removal, but one of those reasons is not crowded teeth.
