Doctors Urge Individuals Not To Attempt The New ‘Sleepy Chicken’ Trend on TikTok

According to reports, doctors are advising people to avoid re-creating the latest TikTok trend because it’s not good for your health.

‘Sleepy chicken‘ is the latest trend in which users are creating their own chicken dish that is cooked in cold and flu medication syrup.

Users are calling the recipe ‘NyQuil Chicken’ or ‘Sleepy Chicken’ which is equivalent to the product Night Nurse in the UK.

Doctors are strongly advising against individuals cooking chicken, or any food, with cold and flu remedy products. 

Usually, people take supplements with their prescriptions or food, but in this case the food is soaked in the cold and flu medication.

During a interview with The Sun, Dr. Jeff Foster stated that social media should never be utilized as a source of medical knowledge.

He said: “It tends to bring out the worst in some cases, hence the Darwinian approach of anti-vaxxers who obtain their medical “research” from such sources as Facebook and Instagram.”

“The case of NyQuil chicken is no different.  The idea that by saturating any food product in a medicine believing that it will provide some novel health benefit or cure is not just stupid, but incredibly dangerous.”

Dr. Aaron Hartman, a Physician and assistant clinical professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University explained why the trend is so dangerous.

“When you cook cough medicine like NyQuil, you boil off the water and alcohol in it, leaving the chicken saturated with a super concentrated amount of drugs in the meat.” He said “If you ate one of those cutlets completely cooked, it’d be as if you’re actually consuming a quarter to half a bottle of NyQuil.”

In a number of videos posted to TikTok, users are seen using a half of bottle of medicine to cook their chicken in. In other videos, users are seen cooking the raw chicken in medicine for just five minutes before serving. 

According to Dr. Hartman this could lead to food poisoning, sickness and diarrhea.

Additionally, he noted that breathing in the medicine as well as ingesting it is a major concern when cooking chicken with cold and flu medication.

“Inhaled, these medicines also enter your bloodstream really quickly and are not going past your liver for detoxification. The effects can be quite bad depending on how much you inhale”, he added.

“We have doses on medicines for a reason. If you soak a food in it, and then cook it, you are very likely to overdose or at least have no idea what dose you are getting. By taking more than you should, you run the real risk of acute liver poisoning, as well as dizziness, vomiting, seizures, and death.”

“By cooking the food you remove the water and any other liquid in there that gives an idea of dose so you just get a super concentrated dose.” He said “You would never dream of taking a whole box of paracetamol in one go, and yet there is really little difference.  The safety risk is just so unbelievably high.”

Doctors warn that by using medications similar to NyQuil, it can cause both physical and psychological effects on your body, including liver failure.