Social media can be a great place to connect with friends and family as well as learning about the newest trends and talking points, but doctors have warned people to steer clear of the latest fad – as it poses a danger to your health.
The so-called ‘sleepy chicken’ trend sees users concocting their very own chicken dish, braised in a cold and flu remedy, the NY Post reports.
Users refers to the recipe as ‘Nyquil chicken’ or ‘sleepy chicken’, and the UK equivalent to Nyquil would be a product like Night Nurse.
Doctors have warned that you should not be braising your chicken – or anything for that matter in a cold and flu remedy product.
Several videos on TikTok show people making the ‘dish’, with some using close to half a bottle of the medicine for their meat.
While most people usually take medicines or food with supplements, this trend sees the food being soaked in the solution.
Speaking to The Sun, Dr. Jeff Foster said social media should never be used as a source of medical information.
He said: “It tends to bring out the worst in some cases, hence the 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.”
Physician and assistant clinical professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Aaron Hartman explained why the trend is 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. 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”, he told MIC.com.
Some of the videos online show people boiling raw chicken in the medicine for just five minutes before serving it ‘ready to eat’.
Dr. Hartman explained that this could actually lead to food poisoning, which will likely lead to sickness and diarrhoea.
He also explained that another big risk when cooking your chicken in medicine, is the fact that you are breathing the medicine in, as well as eating it.
“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. Dr Foster 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. Read more at the NY Post.
{Matzav.com}