I found that the wisdom teeth touch a muscle of the jaw, and I think this interaction is important to the movement of the jaw.
The following is a picture of the mouth showing the wisdom tooth and the masseter muscle in the inner cheek touching it:
(Picture edited from one by user West-One-1634 on www.reddit.com: Link.)
This element you can see in the cheek touching the wisdom tooth is made up of the masseter muscle at its core, covered by the bucal fat pad, poking through the buccinator muscle and pressing, tightly, on the wisdom tooth.
When the jaw moves, the pressure of this muscle pressing on the wisdom tooth helps to control the jaw's movement, and if a wisdom tooth were to be removed, this interaction would cease.
Press here for more pictures showing all the parts I mentioned here in detail.
Impacted wisdom teeth (wisdom teeth stuck in their eruption) are commonly removed based on possible future issues from them. However, I suggest you consider not removing yours.
The following scientific paper objects to the removal, saying most removals are actually needless: The Prophylactic Extraction of Third Molars: A Public Health Hazard (prophylactic means preventive).
As well, in the UK, the guidelines for the national health service are not to remove impacted wisdom teeth unless they actually have a current problem: Guidelines for wisdom teeth removal.
Note: It is advisable, in my opinion, to go regularly to a dentist for checkups, perhaps once every six months or year, to monitor the teeth in general, especially if you have impacted wisdom teeth, and fix problems early.
Sometimes wisdom teeth are removed for orthodontic treatment, under the belief that they would crowd the other teeth and make them crooked. However, research suggests this is actually untrue.
In this scientific paper (The Prophylactic Extraction of Third Molars: A Public Health Hazard in section "Myth Number 3 - Pressure of Erupting Third Molars Causes Crowding of Anterior Teeth") the author writes that studies have proved that wisdom teeth do not cause crowding of the other teeth, and that wisdom teeth's eruption doesn't have enough force to move the other teeth. So, removing wisdom teeth for orthodontic treatment is needless and a mistake.
Avoidance of wisdom tooth removal is possible by the following:
Crooked teeth and impacted wisdom teeth are usually caused by the jaw being too small to accommodate the teeth. The jaw doesn't become large enough because of not chewing enough hard foods in childhood, while the bones are still growing, since the higher mechanical stress of chewing hard foods is needed to stimulate the growth of the jaw. Children and teens need to eat some foods such as whole and uncooked fruits and vegetables.
More information about this can be found here:
My name is Asaf Cygelberg. I was born in 1984 and I live in Tel Aviv, Israel. I studied in the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students at Tel Aviv University and have been published in a scientific journal for work I had done on mathematics in biology (the use of graph theory in epidemiology). I have been researching the effects of wisdom tooth removal on my own on and off since 2012, and had wisdom tooth removal myself. You can write me at 1wasasalted@gmail.com.
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