5 Ways to Make Your Jaws as Big as Humanely Possible

My MewCon 2024 Talk

Ron gave this talk at the first ever MewCon in New York City on August 17, 2024.

Introduction: What is Airway Maximalism?

A big part of what I do is maintain a 12,000ft view of the airway world. Since I am purely a consultant, and do not offer any treatments of my own (since I am not a healthcare provider of any kind), I have the luxury of being able to keep a very broad, disinterested view of all airway treatments modalities.

In this talk, I want survey 5 approaches to maximizing three dimensional jaw augmentation that I am seeing done, and that clients regularly ask me to help them compare and contrast, in terms of pros and cons.

First of all, what do I mean by 3 dimensional jaw augmentation? By this, I mean both widening and advancing the jaws as much as is reasonably possible for a given patient. Think: make the box bigger, in every way.

3 dimensional jaw augmentation is something generally sought after by what I call “maximalists,” which are patients that want it all - the full monty of jaw reconstruction. As one client aptly put it when explaining his case to me last week: “I need everything,” he said.

This particular patient was a 36 year old army veteran with long brown hair and jaws so small and so recessed it looked like he had a permanent frown on his face. This man was worn thin, and desperate for air and for sleep.

To quote the TV show True Detective: I could see his soul bleeding out the edges of his tired eyes.

2 Types of Airway Maximalists

Generally I find that airway maximalists tend to fall into 2 categories: 1) desperate airway patients who are approaching death’s door, such as the man I just described and 2) bold biohackers who are doing pretty good but want to be doing great, and they have the money and the balls to try and make that happen.

These are the type of people who are willing to just “go for it,” doing extreme, unconventional things with their time and with their bodies in order to have great experiences in life.

A good example of the latter category is a client who I spoke to recently who was a 29 year old, wealthy digital nomad who spent almost 2 years on a waitlist to have a famous New York tattoo artist sleeve both his arms, and who called me from the Philipines where he was “geomaxxing” with a group of friends.

This means he proactively sought out a country where his American dollar was more valuable and his European appearance was rarer and more appreciated, in order to maximize his chance of dating success. Clearly this guy was a serial optimizer.

He had a visibly narrow palate and recessed jaws, wanted to solve his breathing troubles, fix his TMJ pain and, of course, look better. And he wanted to do it quickly and without compromise. He wanted a path forward that was fast and maximally effective, and his tolerance for more invasive procedures was high.

Foreshadowing: he was interested in the fastest, most invasive and most effective treatment to be discussed below. Option #5.