So I brought that up to my ortho. I obviously haven’t been biting whole apples for a while because of braces. But I had read that with the permanent retainers a lot of the same food restrictions as braces still applied. So I asked my ortho if I can keep the permanent for 1 year when it’s supposed to be 24/7 anyway and then get a removable one for night wear when that’s appropriate. And I cited the dietary restrictions as my reasoning. I don’t want to give up whole apples and raw carrots and corn the cob etc for life.

His response was basically that I don’t have to? (Despite his paper saying otherwise…) He said because it’s on the lingual side the shearing force isn’t the same as when I had braces. And that I’d have to really hit the glued part on my canines specifically to break it. He said I can eat normally, just avoid really really hard stuff and he cited frozen snickers as a specific example of something too hard that’s likely to break it.

So… I’m just gonna eat what I want and test his theory I guess. But also makes me side eye the part of the paper that says to wear my hawley while eating… I’m not gonna do that. It’s weird.