If compared to their older counterparts, teens are gifted with natural abilities to heal quickly, have near-limitless stamina, and the guts to do almost anything imaginable.
They smoke, take drugs, have unprotected sex, attempt extreme stunts and more, even when they know they're risky.
It's common to see teens to ponder with risks.
While they do weigh the pros and cons of engaging in high-risk behavior, doctors said that teens tend to value immediate gratification and acceptance, and see those to outweigh almost everything else, even their logic.
Being part of the crowd, is all that matters.
This is why teens can be seen doing stunts that won't ever be attempted by their older peers.
And that include the attempting the "Sleepy Chicken" trend that became a trend on TikTok.
Creating the Sleepy Chicken involves cooking chicken braised in cold and flu medicine.
In some of the videos circulating on TikTok, people appear to boil the chicken with the flu remedy for a few minutes, letting the chicken to cook while it is soaked with the medicine.
"Make sure you're constantly flipping over the chicken. You don't want to give one side more attention than the other," one TikTok user said. "Sometimes the steam really makes you sleepy."
And when the chicken is done, they said that it's "ready to eat".
TikTokers suggested that cooking the "recipe" can provide a good night’s rest and make it easier to combat cold and other symptoms.
Chicken is one of the most popular substitute for red meats. And because it's a great source of protein, chicken is considered a nutritious food, and its meat has been linked to a variety of health benefits.
Medicines on the other hand, are chemicals that are made to cure certain diseases, and are only suggested to be consumed the way they are meant to be.
Combining the two, is dangerous.
And following the trend on TikTok, doctors have issued a warning regarding this Sleepy Chicken, urging people to avoid cooking chicken with cold or flu medicines.
Doctors warned that cooking chicken, or anything, with cold and flu remedies, can bring out the worst cases, and that it is "stupid" and is "incredibly dangerous."
Read: TikTok User Suffered A Heart Attack After Trying The ‘Dry Scooping’ Challenge
This is because preparing this Sleepy Chicken involves pouring half or the whole bottle of flu or cough medicine on a raw chicken before braising it.
Cooking the ingredients can leave the cutlets cooked. However, the process will boil off water and the alcohol contained within the medicines.
This will leave the chicken saturated with a highly concentrated amount of drug in the meat.
The evidence of this can be seen from the color of the chicken meet after it is cooked.
In other words, even when no chemical reaction took place while cooking with the heat, eating the chicken is similar to consuming a huge amount of the medicine.
And if that alone is not enough, cooking chicken with medicine is also a recipe for food poisoning.
Medicines have doses for a reason. And soaking a food in it, and then cooking it, is far from a remedy.
Even breathing the fumes of evaporated flu medicine can be dangerous.
In many cases, eating a Sleepy Chicken can also have both physical and psychological effects, and in extreme cases, depending on how much is consumed, can result in dizziness, vomiting, seizures and even death.
TikTok is a common place for people attempting to do challenges.
And those challenges can include things involving food.
Things on TikTok tend to be made just for fun. This is why the social media is extremely popular among teenagers and other youngsters.
To most people, they know that cooking Sleepy Chicken ingredient is obviously a risky attempt, and eating it can be poisonous. To most of the population, they definitely know how outright absurd and obviously dangerous this Sleepy Chicken is, without having to be warned about it.
While many teens also know that, again, teens may attempt the challenge.
Despite that the Sleepy Chicken may be invented as a joke at first, the issue is more about the fact that many teens view gratification and being popular as priorities. Regardless it's poisonous or not, many teens would attempt to cook and eat Sleepy Chicken in order to earn engagements and likes on social media.
In fact, the trend has sparked the so-called Sleepy Chicken Challenge or Sleep Chicken Challenge or #SleepChicken on social media. The trend is also know as the "NyQuil Chicken."
Some said that this kind of trend tends to be the results of some of the worst cases that happen in society.
In this case, some places, particularly in the U.S., COVID-19 cases are increasing, and some anti-vaxxers may want to obtain some remedies from people's suggestions on social media networks.
It has for more than plenty of times, that doctors suggest that people should never rely on social media networks as their source of medical information.
