I just had mine taken out last year, at 38. I’m still getting used to the absence of pain in my gums, and still deliberating over whether I’m vain enough to get braces to straighten my (fine until I was in my late twenties) teeth.
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I had three out of the four out. Pretty sure it was necessary as I couldn’t brush them properly but food was still getting to them. The fourth was completely covered by bone and causing no problems. I was given the choice of having them removed in the chair or in hospital under general. I choose hospital.
Necessary? No. But it is great fun to not spend half an hour to an hour and a half reaching my tongue into the back of my mouth to pull out morsels of food. I do not miss that chore in the slightest and having abandoned it I relish the piece of mind I have gained.
I’m going with a solid, YMMMV*
*the extra m is for molar
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Wait, what!?
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It’s true. But I had mine out when I was 12.
I had no idea. And at least 25% of the peeps I went to school with were Mormon. This actually explains a lot of swollen cheeks I saw in high school.
Thank FSM I have straight roots in my teeth. I don’t have great teeth, but the four extractions, three crowns, and two root canals haven’t been bad.
(I can tell I’m gonna need another root canal. It won’t hurt, but it’ll be expensive)
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My orthodontist took a different route. He removed my first bicuspids and then used the braces to pull everything forward. It usually takes a dentist a minute to figure out what he’s looking at since I have in all four wisdom teeth perfectly aligned. And there was no knee to the chest, I just got novacaine and a hand pressing the side of my head into the chair harder…
As an aside, this guy in Arizona is a fantastic dentist.
He is kind of an ass, but his work is excellent. I am contemplating flying over to get work done, even though he will be condescending and dismissive.
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Will he use your check to fly to Africa and shoot a lion?
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More likely to donate to trump 
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Valium that was. I didn’t have for my wisdom teeth though that fun was top ones grew out more than the rest of the teeth and then destroyed the lower ones eventually.
Valium I know about from getting a camera stuck down my throat and into my stomach. I remember a needle going into my arm and then being in the recovery room with my clothes back on. It wipes your short term memory but it makes you really happy and relaxed but awake and able to answer questions and such.
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Well this is timely as I’m getting mine out on Tuesday under a general anaesthetic. One all the way through and likely to cause damage to the gum on the opposite side, two on the bottom heavily impacted with one impinging on a nerve, and the two on the top close enough to the base of the sinuses to potentially cause problems. So, fun fun fun. The doctor performing the surgery is one of the best in my city though.
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Same with mine. They got removed back in high school. They were only going to do a local but wound up putting me out halfway through the procedure. I only recovered bits of memories of the procedure a week or 2 later. Good times.
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I had one pulled yesterday because of pericoronitis. It took the dentist half hour to pull the damn thing out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericoronitis
Hey, those lions aren’t going to shoot themselves…
How on Earth is this conclusion:
Wisdom teeth removal is rarely necessary
drawn from this statement:
Your wisdom teeth don’t usually need to be removed if they’re impacted but aren’t causing any problems.
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My dentist too has TVs for patients to watch while trapped in their chairs. All was going well at my last visit until a big hairy tarantula slowly made its way across the screen (someone had chosen to show a wildlife documentary). I’m not a big fan, but it could have been much worse for some, I imagine.
Maybe they should’ve just stuck with the ads.
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My dentist keeps getting in new equipment: a stand-up x-ray machine that rotates the camera around your head, a camera on a wand they use to examine teeth up close. The staff also keeps trying to talk me into things like mouth guards and tooth whitening, which I find of dubious value. FWIW, I still have all my wisdom teeth, which came in with minimal problems; freaked the dentist right out the first time he realized what he was dealing with.
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I still have mine. No cavities. Pain in the ass during teething. Especially in college. I’d have a daily routine of chomping down on a cotton ball soaked in clove oil. Oh, the pain! Generally, it made me an unpleasant individual. I even resulted to some self-administered dental surgery for an operculum on my lower jaw. A mirror, flashlight, & carving knife solved that one. If you want to keep them, get a dental pick and make it a habit of compressing the gums around the tooth to squeeze out any food that lodges under the skin. Don’t be surprised if theres a ton of pus too. Fun stuff this life without dental insurance. It’s do able. Pain=Experience=Wisdom.
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citation? so far as i’ve ever seen, most modern anthropologists and archaeologists claim about 30-40% of hunter/gather diet came from meat. the rare exception being inuits, where it’s around 90%.
the “man the hunter” theory – based on male-centric western philosophy – biased early anthropology, but none of it has played out firmly in actual data. many paleo-environmental studies point to riparian and woodland environments with diets based on starches and fruits, supplemented by scavenging; not the savannah environment ( and the hunting it requires ) we see in those areas today.
[ this is just one secondary news article. it says no more than 40-50%, others i saw which didn’t seem to be offering dieting advice said even less. ]
that concurs with what i’ve read as well. add in there the rise of disease, and you almost wonder why people decided to grow crops at all.
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