Removing wisdom teeth reduces risk of oral infections, doesn’t cause heart issues

An Instagram reel shared on 5 August 2024 claimed that removing one’s wisdom teeth can cause people to “develop heart issues”. It also claimed that all teeth are meridian lines, “so if you mess with those meridian lines, you mess with all the pathways of the body”. The reel was reposted across other social media accounts, including one Facebook post that had received nearly one million plays and more than 6,500 likes at the time of writing.

The person speaking in the reel, Matt Roeske, is a co-founder of Cultivate Elevate, a company that sells herbs and supplements which claim to help with “energy, focus, and vitality”. Science Feedback previously reviewed baseless claims from Roeske which purported that viruses don’t exist and that peanut oil causes peanut allergies.

While wisdom tooth extraction isn’t always medically necessary, we couldn’t find scientific evidence to support the claim that removing wisdom teeth leads to heart issues. On the contrary, there are oral health risks associated with keeping one’s wisdom teeth, as we will explain below.

What are wisdom teeth and why do dentists recommend removing them?

Wisdom teeth (also called “third molars”) are the final set of permanent teeth that come through at the back of the mouth, typically during a person’s late teens or early twenties. The term “wisdom tooth” is thought to be tied to their arrival in adulthood, the notion being that one is older and wiser when these teeth erupt.

However, the presence and eruption of wisdom teeth varies from person to person. Indeed, some people never grow wisdom teeth at all. Others may have impacted wisdom teeth, which occur when the teeth are fully or partially trapped in the gums or jawbone. Figure 1 below illustrates the different ways in which impacted wisdom teeth may grow.

Figure 1 – Types of wisdom teeth (indicated by the right tooth) relative to second molars (indicated by the left tooth). Impacted wisdom teeth may grow and erupt at various angles, including toward the second molar (convergent) or away from the front of the mouth (divergent). Sometimes wisdom teeth are not present at all. Source: Campbell et al.

The American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) estimates that “[n]ine out of ten people have at least one impacted wisdom tooth”. Informed Health Online, the patient information portal for Germany’s national health care system, estimates that “[u]p to 80% of young adults in Europe have at least one wisdom tooth that hasn’t broken through”.

Risks associated with impacted wisdom teeth include damage to neighboring teeth, gum disease (periodontitis), and tooth decay, since these teeth are more difficult to properly clean.

Wisdom tooth surgery may not always be medically necessary if these teeth grow in fully in the right places and can be cleaned properly. However, given its low risk of complications—especially among young people—dentists often recommend wisdom tooth removal as a preventive measure for maintaining dental health.

Poor oral health is linked to heart disease, though reasons for this connection remain unclear

The AAOMS shared that “[o]ral bacteria may travel from your mouth through the bloodstream, where it may lead to possible systemic infections and illnesses that affect the heart, kidneys and other organs.”

In an interview with Penn State Health, cardiologist Andrew Waxler said:

“We’ve known for years that people who have infections in their mouth ― like cavities and other problems ― are at higher risk of getting what’s called endocarditis. That’s a fancy way of saying infection of the heart valve.”

Thus, because removing the wisdom teeth can reduce the risk of oral infections, it may also indirectly reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases by way of reducing overall infection risk. This contradicts Roeske’s claim, which stated that removing wisdom teeth causes people to “develop heart issues”.

However, it’s important to note that the reasons for this connection between poor oral health and cardiovascular disease remain speculative, though scientists do seem to agree on a few theories.

The first is that the bacteria that cause tooth and gum infections may travel and cause damage to other parts of the body, such as the coronary artery, which carries oxygen-rich blood to the heart. According to Waxler, “People can get strep bacteria from the mouth that goes into the blood stream(sic) and goes down and latches onto the valves and causes an infection”.

The second is that inflammatory responses—such as those that occur in response to tooth or gum infection—may set off a chain reaction of inflammatory response throughout the body. Chronic inflammation has been shown to play a role in heart disease^[1,2].

Confounding factors—in this case, habits or behaviors that aren’t directly related to oral health, such as smoking or a sedentary lifestyle—may also underpin the association observed between poor oral health and heart disease. For example, it’s possible that those who smoke or lead sedentary lives may also tend to pay less attention to oral health. As such, these habits can come to be associated with poor oral health, even though they have no direct causal relationship.

No scientific evidence indicating meridian lines are real

In the reel, Roeske implied that because teeth are “meridian lines” connected to the brain and heart, heart issues can arise as a result of wisdom tooth removal.

The concept of meridians stems from ancient practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine. Put simply, the idea is that meridian lines transport blood and energy throughout the body, so interruptions to this energy flow can have negative health consequences.

However, we were unable to find any research to support the alleged benefits of using meridian lines for health promotion. We searched PubMed#, a digital repository of articles maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, for studies related to meridian lines, dental health, and cardiovascular health. The search yielded zero results.

Likewise, Scientific American and Science-Based Medicine reported in 2004 and 2012 respectively that there is no scientific evidence indicating that meridian lines exist.

Roeske’s claim that removing the wisdom teeth causes “heart issues” is thus unfounded for most of the general population. That said, invasive dental procedures like tooth extraction can occasionally cause complications in patients at high risk of endocarditis^[3]. However, this has nothing to do with meridian lines, and these patients can prevent complications by taking antibiotic treatment to reduce the risk of infection.

 

#PubMed search terms: ((meridian lines[Title/Abstract]) AND (teeth[Title/Abstract])) AND (cardiovascular disease[Title/Abstract])

 

REFERENCES

• 1 – Alfaddagh et al. (2020) Inflammation and cardiovascular disease: From mechanisms to therapeutics. American Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
• 2 – Willerson and Ridker. (2004) Inflammation as a Cardiovascular Risk Factor. Circulation.
• 3 – Thornhill et al. (2022) Antibiotic Prophylaxis Against Infective Endocarditis Before Invasive Dental Procedures. Journal of the American College of Cardiology.