Rapper Davion Blessing, 23, recently got his big break, bursting onto the scene and winning over fans all over the world.
But his fans and doctors have expressed concern about the health of the artist, whose stage name is Dave Blunt, whose weight is estimated to be around 500 pounds.
He says he has drunk lean regularly for the past seven years, an illegal mixture of cough syrup, soda and candy that has a sedative effect.
In addition to drugs, he said he “eats everything” and has shared diet attempts online that include only eating fruit for a month. After eating, he said he often lies down to rest.
That’s on top of the fact that he’s not active and shared that he currently gets more exercise by walking while traveling than at any other time in his life.
Blessing was recently hospitalized before a concert in Chicago for unexplained reasons, prompting him to carry an oxygen tank on stage for his performance.
He has shared that he has difficulty climbing stairs and that he has been hospitalized frequently, usually with conditions related to asthma, which he has had his entire life.
Dr. Stuart Fischer, an internal medicine doctor in New York City, told DailyMail.com that with his size, Blessing could be headed for an early death.
Dr Fischer said: “When someone your age needs oxygen, we know something is wrong. This can’t go on forever.”
A photo of £500 rapper Dave Blunts and his girlfriend has gone viral after the star, 23, sparked health fears by performing on stage with an oxygen tank.
Blunts was among the performers in Chicago for the late rapper’s 4th Annual JUICE WRLD DAY, but attention quickly turned to his health as he performed while sitting in the tank and accompanied by his partner Isabella.
He said Blessing’s weight probably makes it difficult to breathe, both because of the excess pounds compressing his sternum and because abdominal fat can secrete chemicals that cause the lungs to swell, making asthma worse.
Obesity, Dr. Fischer said, is a condition that is linked to approximately 60 different medical conditions. This includes heart disease, diabetes, cancer and respiratory problems.
Dr. Fischer said he suspected that because of Blessing’s weight, her insulin levels might be altered. Insulin is a hormone that controls how the body processes and uses sugar and can affect energy. He told this website: “This is automatic diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol because this scenario is strongly linked to insulin resistance.”
Blessing is not alone: Approximately 22 million American adults suffer from severe obesity, and the condition causes approximately 500,000 deaths a year, according to Harvard research.
Amid widespread concerns about his health, the Iowa rapper shared that he is trying to take steps to lose weight.
He said that although he has always been “bigger,” his diet and exercise habits have added up to contribute to his current weight. He said, “I’m definitely doing it to myself.”
‘It’s something I struggle with, yes, but I’m working on it, you know what I’m saying.
“Hopefully after this album comes out you’ll know that I can sign a contract and then I’ll have the money to get a personal trainer, you know what I’m saying, all that shit.”
This has given rise to a series of diets. In late September, she shared that she was going to try eating nothing but fruit for a month, with apples and watermelons being her favorites.
There is no food that Blessing prefers over others, and in a recent interview she said, “I just eat everything.”
Dr. Fischer said that the type of food someone eats to gain a large amount of weight matters less than the amount they eat: “To gain that amount of weight you have to eat an enormous amount of calories each day, the type of food It really doesn’t make any difference.”
Bless you with one of your branded glasses, which you sell online for $5.
In addition to his diet, Blessing almost never appears without a plastic cup in hand labeled with his personal brand, ‘Dave Blunts Purple Stuff.’
The cup’s design mimics two stacked Styrofoam cups, in a nod to a popular concoction called lean.
Lean refers to a combination of cough syrup, soda, and hard candy, traditionally served in a stack of Styrofoam cups. It was popularized in the early 2000s by rappers like Little Lil Wayne.
Cough syrup contains codeine and promethazine, two medications that work together to make a person feel sedated.
It is also known as ‘purple drink’, ‘drink’, ‘sizzurp’ and ‘mud’.
Blessing has told interviewers before that he has been drinking it since he was sixteen, regularly.
It’s unclear what Blessing puts in her concoction, but if it’s sprite, which is a popular choice, she consumes about 130 calories and 38 grams of added sugar with each 10-ounce can.
It looks like the Blessing cup holds about 20 ounces, so you could get twice as much with each serving.
On top of that, if Blessing added six hard candies like Jolly Ranchers to the mix, that would result in another 35 calories and 6.5 grams of sugar.
Cough syrup is also often sweetened and, on average, contains about 20 calories and 3 grams of sugar per teaspoon. People don’t often measure their syrup before making it lean, which means there could be a lot of calories and medicine in each serving.
The rapper said on the No Jumper podcast that he has also used other drugs such as Percocet, ecstasy and Xanax.
More than his diet, Blessing said in the No Jumper podcast that their weight has to do with their activity levels: “It’s more like laziness.” I just eat and then relax or sleep or something.
Blessing shared that she has been trying to walk more, but has to stop for frequent breaks due to her asthma and foot pain.
Blessing shared that she’s been trying to exercise more but is finding it difficult, saying, “Since I’m exploding, you know this is the closest exercise I’ve ever done in my fucking life, walking.” These damn airports, man.
When Blessing exercises or walks, he shares that he often feels uncomfortable and has to stop and use his inhaler or sit down.
Dr. Fischer said this difficulty is likely multifactorial. For starters, the rapper has asthma, which can be exasperated by the hormones secreted by fat cells in the abdomen, causing asthma.
He said: “Fat secretes inflammatory chemicals that can worsen or even start an asthma attack; the weight itself causes people to have breathing problems and other conditions such as obstructive sleep apnea.”
This is why diseases like Covid, which can cause inflammation in the lungs, are so dangerous for overweight people, because their lungs may already be weakened.
Secondly, it can be tiring to carry a lot of fat around. Dr. Fischer said the sensation would be like carrying 80-pound weights all day and could cause pain in the ankles, wrists and spine.
This becomes a viscous cycle, where an overweight person doesn’t want to move because it hurts, but the less they move, the harder it is for them to lose weight.
To regain her health, Dr. Fischer said Blessing would need to make serious changes to her diet and exercise routine, and would likely need to take medications to control her blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.