Lil Wayne's seizures and memory loss - Another dental story?
Let's use his case to examine 'grillz' and their impact on biomechanics.
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The guy's been dominating hip-hop for over two decades.
But lately? Things are looking pretty rough.
A little while back a Substack reader asked what I thought about Lil Wayne and whether his love for diamond-studded grillz might be behind some of his health issues.
To be honest I didn’t know much about Lil Wayne. Sure i’d heard his name and his music plenty of times, but never really considered myself a ‘fan’.
However I thought he’d be an interesting case from the perspective of do these ‘grillz’ impact biomechanics? And if so, how much?
Who is Lil Wayne?
So Lil Wayne started as a kid prodigy from New Orleans' Hollygrove neighborhood, signing with Cash Money Records at just 11 years old. Born Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. in 1982, he literally grew up in the music industry.
By the late 1990s as part of the Hot Boys, he was already making waves. But it wasn't until he went solo that things really took off.
He’s sold over 150 million records worldwide. He's won 5 Grammys, 11 BET Awards, and pretty much every other award you can imagine in hip-hop. His "Tha Carter" album series is legendary - particularly "Tha Carter III" which sold over a million copies in its first week back in 2008.
He's influenced an entire generation of rappers including Drake, Nicki Minaj, and countless others. At his peak in the late 2000s, he was literally everywhere - on every radio station, every club playlist, every remix.
The guy had great structure too - you can see it in his early photos. Nice profile, symmetric face, the works.
What has Lil Wayne done to his teeth?
Now here's where things get interesting from my perspective...
Lil Wayne is famous for his dental "grillz" - decorative gold and diamond caps that cover his teeth. He's had multiple sets over the years, sometimes covering his entire mouth with diamonds and gold.
In various interviews, he's bragged about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on his dental jewelry. He's even had permanent implants and caps installed - not just removable grillz but actual alterations to his dental occlusion.
And in February 2010, he underwent an extensive eight-hour dental surgery that included eight root canals, the replacement and addition of several dental implants, and repairs to his remaining natural teeth. This procedure was medically necessary and even led to a postponement of his prison sentence to allow for recovery.
What has been happening to him lately?
This is where it gets dark.
Wayne's been having seizures since 2012. Not just one or two - we're talking multiple seizures that have landed him in the hospital repeatedly. In 2013, he had a series of seizures that almost killed him. He was in ICU for days.
The official story? He has epilepsy. But is it mere coincidence that these seizures started happening around the same time he was really going heavy with the dental modifications.
He's also been complaining about memory issues. In interviews, he's talked about not remembering recording certain songs or entire periods of his career. He's mentioned having trouble with his short-term memory and concentration (as in video above).
His behavior has gotten more erratic too. The guy who used to be sharp as a tack in interviews now sometimes seems confused or struggles to stay on topic.
And physically? His face has changed a lot. His jaw looks different, his profile has shortened, and he's looking more ‘collapsed.’
My biomechanical interpretation
First… let me start by saying that I don’t think removable ‘grillz’ are bad.
In fact when I look at this one above.. I’d say if you were wearing this you are actually going to get healthier. Because it adheres to my two rules:
1- Adds vertical height between the teeth
2- Does not lock an ‘occlusion’ (ie. upper and lower teeth slide over one another)
So it could be that earlier on during his rise to fame in the early 2000’s that his grillz were actually helping him a bit. For example this is a pic of him in 2005.
You don’t get like this just by lifting lots of weights. You get this way because of good biomechanics.
But at some point his grillz were definitely locking an occlusion. For example this photo below was from 2014 and this is most definitely locking an occlusion.
So I have a feeling it was the massive dental work he did before going to jail in 2010 that perhaps did him in the worst. With the implants they put in, they most likely locked an occlusion and did it according to their flawed dental model.
Which does not account for the fact that the jaw needs to be supported in multiple positions by the cusps of the teeth as I’ve described in this article.
And this is something that is nearly impossible for a dentist to artificially recreate correctly. I know because in 2018 I was trying.
I had a dentist in Russia use wet composite and i’d bite with my head nodded forward (with jaw in protrusion) and then nodded back (in retrusion).
The only way you correctly recreate a human occlusion is in this way… doing it directly on the teeth.
And so not understanding this.. his dentist obviously screwed him up. By creating the occlusion you see above in the pic from 2014.
Closing thoughts
Lil Wayne is another classic case of someone whose health mysteriously declined after significant dental work.
The guy went from being one of the sharpest minds in hip-hop to someone struggling with basic neurological function. And it all tracks back to his significant dental work of 2010 in my view.
Will the medical establishment ever make this connection? Probably not. They'll keep calling it epilepsy and prescribing more medications while the real issue is the fact that dentists do not understand how to create a correct human occlusion.
And so they lock a single bite and the skull comes collapsing in. With neurological and cognitive function being the victims.
All he needs is to take the crap out of his mouth, wear a simple mouthguard, and stick with it.
Will he?
I guess we’ll see.
Fascinating that it may have actually helped at one point, depending on how it was done.
This also may give us an example of the timeline we are examining here, where it takes years to manifest in ways that we actually notice. We tend to slowly "boil like a frog" and not realize something is ocurring.
This timeline of years (not weeks or months) will make research on this challenging
I’m sure you’re on to something and it’s becoming common knowledge that most of the time root canals lead to devastation all on their own. 8 root canals with such extensive cosmetic “grillz” is a mega double whammy!