Hello everyone,
Most of you have heard of stem cells (usually from umbilical cord blood or bone marrow), but most of you don't know that you can also harvest them from the dental pulp of teeth, most often wisdom teeth. Umbilical cord blood and bone marrow contain hematopoietic stem cells, which can develop into all types of blood cells. Teeth, on the other hand, contain mesenchymal stem cells, which develop into the connective tissues in the body, such as bone, cartilage, nerve, muscle and fat. There are hundreds of clinical trials underway investigating how to treat a number of medical conditions using adult mesenchymal stem cells.
I would consider harvesting and storing adult stem cells from wisdom teeth as "an insurance policy" for a potential future medical problem that may have a stem cell therapy developed to treat it, but then again, we buy insurance policies on all sorts of material items that don't really matter, especially if we aren't alive to enjoy them.
Below is a short video that I produced talking about the benefits of harvesting adult stem cells from teeth following wisdom tooth extraction.
Below is a link to a CBS news story out of Atlanta that profiles one of my patients that elected to harvest his stem cells from his wisdom teeth.
If you are considering the extraction of your wisdom teeth, please think about taking advantage of the opportunity to harvest the stem cells, before the teeth and the potentially life altering cells within them are disposed of following the procedure. Here is to thinking about your future health.
Andrew Aiken, DMD, MD