Does the Nunawave Oral Care Pro work with a retainer?

Take it out, it won’t fit over a retainer.

Mine actually doesn’t fit over my retainer at all, so I stopped trying to combine them pretty early on. I wear a fairly standard clear retainer from an ortho a few years back and it has that little bump behind the front teeth, and the mouthguard just rocks around on top of it and never feels sealed. So I do the light session first with the retainer out, then pop the retainer back in right before I actually get into bed. Whole thing adds maybe two extra minutes.

What surprised me was that I got used to splitting it up faster than I expected. I thought it would mess with my routine since I’m the type who likes to do everything in one go, but now it just feels like brushing and then flossing, two separate steps that belong together. I keep the mouthguard on its dock next to my toothbrush so I don’t forget it, and the retainer case sits right there too.

If yours somehow sits fine together then that’s your call, but I never got a good enough fit to feel like the light was doing much with all that plastic in the way. Two minutes apart isn’t worth messing with your retainer fit over.

I wouldn’t count on the light doing much through a retainer. That’s the part people seem to skip. Red light has to actually reach the tissue to do anything, and a layer of plastic sitting between the LEDs and your gums is going to block or scatter a good chunk of it. So even if the mouthguard technically fits over your retainer, you’re basically running the session for nothing.

I get wanting to keep things simple, but the retainer is doing a job at night and the mouthguard is doing a different job for those few minutes. Stacking them doesn’t really save you anything. Just run the session first, then pop the retainer in after. It’s the same amount of steps, just in a different order.

Comfort wise I also can’t see it being great with two things in your mouth at once. That’s my take anyway.

Retainer out, mine doesn’t fit with it in.

I skipped the whole combining thing because I figured the light wasn’t going to make it through a solid piece of plastic anyway. That was just my assumption though. But then I read enough back and forth on these things to realize nobody actually knows if the light penetrates a retainer or gets blocked by it, and the company sure isn’t going to say “yeah our product doesn’t work if you wear a retainer.” So I timed my sessions separately from the start. Twenty minutes with the guard, then the retainer goes in after. It’s not that complicated and I don’t have to guess whether I’m wasting my time.

What gets me is the routine angle. Everyone wants to stack everything into one step to save five minutes. I get it, I do the same thing with other stuff. But if you’re already brushing and flossing and putting in a retainer, adding one more separate step for a light session isn’t some huge burden. You’re already in the bathroom doing the whole routine anyway.

The bigger thing is I don’t trust that this thing does much regardless of how you wear it. I’ve been using mine for a couple months and I can’t point to one obvious difference in my gums. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn’t. But I’m not going to make it harder to tell by throwing a retainer in the mix. If you actually want to know if it’s doing anything, keep the variables separate.