Have you ever wondered why so many people end up with impacted wisdom teeth, which cause discomfort, pain and infection, and often require expensive surgical removal? A University of Saskatchewan (USask) graduate student researcher says your childhood diet may have something to do with it.
October 5, 2022
Have you ever wondered why so many people end up with impacted wisdom teeth, which cause discomfort, pain and infection, and often require expensive surgical removal? A University of Saskatchewan (USask) graduate student researcher says your childhood diet may have something to do with it.
« Dialing back the clock just a few hundred years to before the Industrial Revolution, we don’t see impacted wisdom teeth in most people, including our great-great-great-great grandparents, » said Elsa Van Ankum, an evolutionary developmental anthropology Ph.D. student in the Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Pharmacology in USask’s College of Medicine.
« While working as a University of Alberta undergraduate student analyzing skeletons at archaeological sites in Greece and China, I couldn’t help but compare their straight teeth to my own orthodontically challenged teeth. I’ve had braces and all four wisdom teeth removed.
« I started to question why braces and wisdom tooth surgeries were so widespread today, and I’ve been following this thread ever since. »
Many things in the diet changed after the Industrial Revolution, including consuming soft-textured foods that were now being processed in factories by machines that partly « chewed » our foods before we bought them.
