https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/wisdom-teeth-removal-neces...
Routine wisdom teeth removal is not a thing in most of Europe. Another random example are colonoscopies and routine flu vaccines (except for the elderly).
I would have been totally happy to buck the pressure of "this is what everyone does," but the thing that made me reluctantly agree to it was an explanation that if I didn't, they would bore holes into my then-back teeth as they grew in and I'd have a big problem to deal with.
As I understood it, teeth normally grow straight up, but wisdom teeth grow sideways (with the tops facing the front of your mouth). The wisdom teeth then hit the rest of your teeth and basically bulldoze your mouth.
I have no idea how true/bullshit that is, but it's what I was told to get me to finally acquiesce to the procedure.
Oddly, I only had wisdom teeth on one side, and not the other. So only 2 teeth were removed.
Presumably flu shots are good business for the manufacturers, though I'm not sure about the science. After having the flu as a healthy late-twenty-something a while ago, which was...intensely horrible, I've chosen to get it ever since.
I haven’t decided yet since they cause me no problems now and so far I’m to keep them relatively clean, but I have known several elderly family members who eventually needed molars removed because they hadn’t/couldn’t clean them well enough and it was a very difficult surgery for them.
This may be specific to location, but would it be the same dentist recommending the treatment as performing the surgery? Here (BC, Canada) everyone I've known who's had wisdom teeth removed had it done by a specialist, not the dentist that suggested it (which presumably cuts down on self-serving recommendations).
But coming in towards other teeth and hitting them, or other forms of impaction, are pretty common. You probably saw (or could have seen) the situation pretty clearly on an x-ray.
That being said, there is/was definitely an air of "this is just what we do, it's easier this way" for removing wisdom teeth, akin to say, what removing tonsils once was.
did you ever figure out what the root cause of the migraines was?