Why are my wisdom teeth brown?

March 24, 2008 5:45 AM

Satisfy my curiosity: why are my (extracted) wisdom teeth multi-colored?

I just got my wisdom teeth taken out on Friday. I was expected them to be off white, or at least off white and reddish from blood. But instead they are a most peculiar mix of colors. The very bottom is normal tooth color, the top is grayish brown, and the middle is dark caramel brown. See here, here and here. Why is this?

I have done a Google image search and not come up with any extracted teeth that look quite like mine. I've seen my friend's teeth and they also looked normal and white.

If it makes a difference, all four of my teeth were still under the gum before the operation The other two looked the same as the ones shown, but they were broken in half so I didn't bother taking a picture.

posted by puffin to Health & Fitness (3 answers total)

Best answer: history of tetracycline use?
posted by ruwan at 6:05 AM on March 24, 2008 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I think you might be right, ruwan. I was on minocycline, apparently a member of the tetracycline family, from ages 13 to 18. Wow, I didn't realize how extreme its teeth staining effects were -- I guess it's a good thing that most of my teeth had already developed by then.
posted by puffin at 7:07 AM on March 24, 2008

I'd buy the tetracycline thing, because I used it, and my wisdom tooth (only one! woohoo!) looked the same when it was extracted.
posted by joshjs at 11:06 AM on March 24, 2008