IT is cute to watch the teeth pop through the gum when a baby is teething - though not so much fun for the baby - but, writes Lucy Stock, dentist at Gentle Dental Care in Belfast, imagine being in your seventies and teething all over again.
Not all teeth erupt how they are meant to into a child's mouth. Like all the processes in the body things can take a sharp turn off their ideal course leading to biological mayhem and chaos.
We don't really know why teeth erupt up through the gum in the first place.
People have nailed their flag to many different theories, but the proof of the pudding has not been uncovered.
One idea focuses on the semi-circular sack which sits on top of a newly forming tooth inside the jawbone.
This balloon-like structure exerts pressure on the overlying bone causing it to move out of the way.
Combined with a propulsion movement caused by cells on the root surface, this moves the tooth up into the mouth - much like how a comet races across the sky.
If a baby gets a virus or has certain genetic conditions the developing tooth can be stopped in its tract leaving it buried under the gum, never to see the light of day.
Other times teeth can get wedged stuck against each other, especially if someone has an undersized jaw, which is increasingly common.
When you are in your sixties, seventies and even eighties it is normal that you may lose a back tooth.
If a tooth has been jammed against its neighbour, then when the tooth in front is extracted, the buried tooth having lain dormant for decades is suddenly freed.
Its eruption motor starts up again and voila, it pops its head above the gum - granny is teething.
Before the new visitor emerges its common to suffer the advanced welcoming party of pain, tenderness and swelling in the area before the tooth finally makes its bumpy entrance.
If you are very unlucky, infection can set in around the buried tooth causing your face to swell and generally make you feel pretty under the weather.
On the plus side, I have seen these sorts of teeth end up in very useful positions that help with eating.
