Doctors warn about dangerous new sex trend that could have deadly side effects

If you haven't yet found someone in time for cuffing season and your DMs are barren, then at least you can take comfort in knowing you don't have to worry about the latest sex trend doctors are warning about.

However, if you have managed to find someone - unlike one guy who's dating profile is so atrocious it went viral - and have been wanting to boost your performance and heard of a product which supposedly does that for you, then heed this warning.

What are 'honey packets'?

According to TikTok - because that's how you find out about anything these days apparently - young people across campuses are taking something called a 'honey packs' or 'honey packets'.

A packet of honey? How can that be a sex trend or dangerous? I hear you ask. Well, it's not quite as simple as it seems.

A 'honey packet' is reported by Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) website as being 'a product promoted and sold for sexual enhancement'.

TikTok account ASU Chicks saw several college students admit to taking the product, one student even saying he'd taken four of the drugs in one single night and 28 in a week.

However, the FDA and multiple doctors are now speaking out in urgent warning about the 'honey packets'.

'Honey packs' have become a new trend among college students (TikTok/ @grant_harting)

Are 'honey packets' dangerous?

The FDA issued a public notification warning consumers not to 'purchase or use X Rated Honey for Men'.

It explains: "FDA laboratory analysis confirmed additional samples of X Rated Honey for Men contained tadalafil, the active ingredient in the FDA-approved prescription drug Cialis, used to create erectile dysfunction."

Tadalafil 'works by increasing blood flow to the penis, which helps to maintain an erection,' Cleveland Clinic explains.

The FDA continues: "FDA’s approval of Cialis is restricted to use under the supervision of a licensed health care professional. This undeclared ingredient may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs such as nitroglycerin and may lower blood pressure to dangerous levels.

"People with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease often take nitrates."

And the warning has been echoed by other medical professionals too.

Professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina of Medicine's Division of Infectious Diseases, Dr Peter Leone, told USA Today tadalafil can also have further negative consequences when it interacts with alcohol, increasing the risk of 'getting dizzy' or 'passing out' and so while he's 'all about people having good sex and sexual pleasure' there are 'safer ways of doing it."

Doctors have warned 'honey packets' could be dangerous (Getty Stock Images)

Health science clinical professor and the director of the Men's Clinic at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr Jesse Mills, adds: "For a college student, if they already are having difficulty achieving an erection and maintaining it for intercourse, then that's a big health problem that needs to be addressed.

"But if they think that it's just going to help them last longer, help them party harder, then it's probably not going to work unless they really believe in it − in which case, anything works, because the placebo effect is incredibly powerful.

"If any college student is having questions about how well they're performing sexually, they should be evaluated by a sexual health specialist, and we can determine how much of it is something physiologic that we can treat or how much of it is something that we need to address from a more psychological standpoint."