They don`t tend to get banged up much with standard drop bars. With your bars, I think they stick out a bit more to the sides, so might be the first point to contact and break the fall if the bike goes down. Just speculating.
I do that with brake levers and flat bar shifters. Not so sure it would help with bar end shifters, but I don`t see how it would hurt anything either. There`s a screw with a big flat head holding the lever to the mounting body- it`s important to keep that one tight. To remove or rotate the bodies (or to loosen so they hopefully get out of the way before snapping off), first shift into the small ring and sprocket to untension your cables, undo that flat headed mounting screw, then pull the lever off the mount (keep track of the silver or black spacer thingy between the lever and the body and either remove or hold in place the funny nut that goes in opposite the flat screw), and look into the opening in the shifter body. You`ll see the end of an Allen bolt. Turn it "backwards" to loosen and do whatever you want with the shifter body, then tighten it back up again (or not, if you want to try leaving it a bit loose) and put the shifter back together.

The little spacer thingy has to be in the correct orientation or your shifter won`t move the full amount. Shimano, Suntour, and Microshift are slightly different, but I`m pretty sure both of them will physically fit in any of four directions (square tab, square hole)- you need to look for the rectangular bit and point that down. If you put it together and don`t have full range from your lever, just take it back off to rotate the spacer to the next position and try it again.