How should I preserve my wisdom teeth?

September 18, 2011 6:56 AM

How can I preserve my wisdom teeth?

I had my upper wisdom teeth removed, and the dentist let me keep them. What's the best way to preserve them in the long-term? (I'm thinking of keeping them in a jar rather than turning them into earrings or anything like that.) Will a bleach solution do it? Google suggests that autoclaving and/or keeping them in formalin solution is the best way, but I don't have easy access to either of those.

posted by penguinliz to Health & Fitness (8 answers total)

I have kept all my teeth; milk teeth, weird supernumerary teeth and the wisdom tooth I had removed, I keep them all in a small wooden box (with "Milk teeth" written on it). They seem to have kept reasonably well those 10-30+ years they've been there. I've never actually considered putting them in any kind of solution, although I do occasionally contemplate a necklace.
posted by mummimamma at 7:13 AM on September 18, 2011

What? Just... keep them. In a box or a tissue or whatever. They are basically bone; they preserve themselves.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:16 AM on September 18, 2011

A piercing shop might let you use their autoclave.
posted by box at 7:42 AM on September 18, 2011

Encase them in Lucite?
posted by jquinby at 7:43 AM on September 18, 2011

You don't really need a solution to preserve them.
Drop them in a small bottle (like a pill bottle) of hydrogen peroxide for a few days if there is still a little "tissue" on them from the extraction.
posted by Drasher at 7:49 AM on September 18, 2011

My oral surgeon gave me a little plastic box with a happy tooth on the top with my wisdom teeth in it. I promptly put it in a drawer and forgot about it, because what do you do with used teeth? It apparently has made several moves with me since then, since I stumbled across it a couple of weeks ago, some 16ish years later. The teeth are still intact. And still kinda creepy.

Although I guess it's good that I didn't leave them behind in any of my moves, which would have been waaaaaaaaaay creepier for whoever found them!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:47 AM on September 18, 2011

Teeth are resilient. When anthropologists dig up thousand-year-old skulls, the teeth are often intact.

Just put them someplace they won't get stepped on.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:54 AM on September 18, 2011

Give 'em a good wash, pop 'em in a box, forget about 'em until years from now you're going through a box and you go "Oh, what's this box?" and then BAM teeth.
posted by Katemonkey at 1:55 PM on September 18, 2011