Why I think retainers are evil

And why orthodontists are fools for not understanding this

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A lot of people that do orthodontics (braces, aligners, etc) wear retainers after their treatment finishes.

The thinking is that the retainer helps keep the teeth in the new position. Because for many folks the teeth will simply revert back to where they were if they didn’t wear their retainer.

So they continue wearing these retainers to keep their nice, straight teeth.

But in my experience these people almost always start to experience some level of collapse in those years following.

And today I’m going to explain why.

About retainers

A retainer holds the teeth position after orthodontic treatment.

They can be fixed or removable and typically you wear them pretty much full-time for the first year or so. Then you are usually supposed to wear at night for the rest of your life.

Here are some popular types:

1. Hawley Retainer (Removable)

• Acrylic base with a metal wire that wraps around front teeth

2. Clear Plastic Retainer / Essix Retainer (Removable)

• Made from clear plastic molded to your teeth (like Invisalign trays)

• Vivera retainers (by invisalign) are a form of this

Fixed retainer

3. Permanent (Fixed) Retainer

• A thin wire bonded to the back of the front teeth (usually lower front) like the one above.

• This seems to be the most popular lately.

Why do the teeth move back?

This is the question where I just completely disagree with orthodontists and dentists.

Let’s explore the two main potential options:

Option 1- Orthodontic relapse

This is the interpretation by dentists where a variety of factors move the teeth back to where they were if the patient doesn’t wear their retainer. And this ‘relapse’ is regarded as a very bad thing.

For me it is almost like the assumption here is that the human body is stupid.

The smart orthodontist moved the teeth into a position that looks pretty and then this stupid body tries to put them back into that old crooked position.

But…

…if i’ve learned one thing about the human body during my journey the past ten years it is that the body is far from stupid. It is extremely intelligent at how to compensate to keep us alive.

And has far more and better data inputs than we have because let’s be honest.. our understanding of how the human body works is still crude at best.

Option 2- The skull moves the teeth back to regain stability

This is my interpretation of what is going on.

You see…. the skull requires multiple jaw positions (retrusion, rest, protrusion) to be supported by the cusps of the teeth as I explained in this article.

Indexed splints and the magical "perfect jaw position"

When doing aligners/braces the orthodontist only ever accounts for one of them when remodeling your teeth… the rest position.

And so they unknowingly screw up both protrusion and retrusion, which send the skull collapsing in over time.

I know because i did it to myself many times back in 2014-2017.

Why? Because i started with Starecta where you lock a single jaw position with a splint (the ‘rectifier’). And so at the beginning i locked protrusion as they advised and for awhile i seemed to improve.

But then i went in circles. So i instead tried locking rest position and even retrusion.

I always ended up going in circles with a general trend downward. It frustrated the hell out of both me and my friend, Marcello, who was experimenting with the same stuff.

And that is when Marcello realized that you need to support all bite positions.

When we did that.. sure enough we stopped going in circles and we only progressed. I later began to show this visibly on my tracking splint experiments that i talk about here:

A 'tracking splint' is the compass for your TMJ journey

When i supported all three bite positions by registering multiple bites on the same splint, the curve of spee on the splint only improved!

And voila! One of the biggest mysteries (and failures) in modern dentistry was solved!

You cannot lock a single jaw position the way they do in orthodontics, period!

What happens if you wear retainers for a long time?

So if you understood what I said above you should now be able to understand why retainers will send the skull continuously collapsing in.

Because it usually locks a single bite position (ie. upper & lower teeth come together in a fixed position).

The skull tries to move the teeth back to where they will support multiple bite positions, but the retainer stops this from happening.

The retainer essentially handcuffs your body’s innate survival mechanism!

And so over time it puts your skull and skeleton into freefall collapse.

Observe people that wore retainers for many years and see if I’m right.

When I see people that have done ortho followed by years of retainer use I love to start asking questions. I’ll often start with... “hey can you show me a picture of what you looked like pre-ortho?”

And if they have one to show me the skull is always consistently a lot healthier in my experience.

Plus i’ve noticed that the people that took off their retainers relatively soon after the orthodontic treatment have generally had far less structural damage. Because the skull was able to move the teeth back into a new stability position (which may not necessarily be where the teeth were pre-ortho).

Closing thoughts

I’m gonna be straight.. I think it is absolutely ridiculous and stupid that orthodontists and dentists do not understand the gist of what i have said above in 2025.

We’re creating AI that is more intelligent than humans and yet we still have not questioned this stupidity.

Rather orthodontists go on assuming that they are smarter than the human body as to where the teeth should be. And that the body is stupid for trying to move them back.

Trust me…. the body is going to know how to keep you alive and functioning well better than any orthodontist ever will.

And so when people ask me… “should I take off my retainer?”

My answer is pretty much always going to be yes. Particularly if they are doing Reviv.

Because the body knows best.