Do wisdom teeth move your other teeth?

I would like to answer a question that a lot of my patients ask me: Will my wisdom teeth push all of the other teeth forward and make them go wonky?

The existing base of scientific research says that this is not the case. Your wisdom teeth are not able to exert enough force to move other teeth in your mouth. This is a myth that comes from the fact that your lower teeth tend to want to wander forward naturally and this will often happen around the same time as your wisdom teeth come through; your late teens and early twenties.

I believe this is all for the same reason as I mentioned in the ‘Wisdom Teeth’ article. When our diet was tougher, our teeth wore down. All of our teeth drifted forward to fill up the gaps. When your front teeth, most commonly your lower front teeth, crowd forward in your twenties, this is an evolutionary thing to help fill any gaps. If you’ve had any braces treatment, this is part of the reason why it is so important to continue to wear your retainers. If you’ve never had braces but you are worried about your teeth crowding forward, you may want to have a retainer made to keep your teeth in their current position.

So to answer the question, wisdom teeth coming through and teeth crowding forward tend to happen at roughly the same time. They are kind of happening for the same reason but the crowding is not being directly caused by the pressure from the wisdom teeth. Even if you have your wisdom teeth out, your front teeth can move forward and crowd together.