AA Batteries

do people outside the pnw not know about The Big One. like is that not universal knowledge

Your dentist probably told you your wisdom teeth need to come out. Happened with me too. It’s one of the most common surgeries in the world. In the US alone, 10 million wisdom teeth are pulled every year. The UK does another half a million through the NHS. Worldwide, about 35 to 45% of people will need at least one removed in their lifetime. Here’s what it costs you. Days off work, swelling, pain, sometimes weeks of recovery. A study in the American Journal of Public Health found that over 11,000 people a year in the US end up with permanent numbness in their lip, tongue, or chin from nerve damage during the surgery. And roughly two-thirds of these extractions aren’t even medically necessary. Most of the pain people blame on wisdom teeth is actually caused by the surgery to remove them, not the teeth themselves. After all that, the tooth goes in the trash. Inside each wisdom tooth is soft tissue called dental pulp. It’s packed with stem cells. Scientists first pulled them from wisdom teeth in 2000. These cells grow 30% faster than bone marrow stem cells, and you don’t need a needle in your hip to get them. They come from a tooth your dentist was about to throw away. Labs have turned these cells into nerve cells that fire real electrical signals, bone, cartilage, and heart muscle. In mice with Alzheimer’s, a single transplant cleared toxic plaques and brought back memory. In Parkinson’s rodent models, they replaced lost dopamine neurons and restored movement. A 2024 study published in Nature’s International Journal of Oral Science confirmed cognitive improvement in Alzheimer’s mice after one treatment. Most of this is still in animals and lab dishes. Only about 10 clinical trials were registered globally as of 2024, mostly for dental uses like regrowing gum tissue. The biggest human trial so far (132 patients, published in Nature) was for periodontal disease, not brain repair. We’re years away from using these cells to treat neurological conditions. But the cells are real. The science is 25 years deep. And millions of them hit biohazard bins every year across the world. You went through the pain, the swelling, the missed days. And the most valuable part of the tooth got tossed.

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