Donuts, Apple Fritters, Linked To Tourette Cure, Study Finds

Seattle, WA

In a recent study of cats combating Tourette Syndrome, cats and kittens who ate donuts produced markedly increased amounts of dopamine, a chemical key to the brain's reward system that is scarce in the brains of cats with this disease.

Tourette Syndrome (also called Tourette’s Syndrome) is an inherited neuro-psychiatric disorder common in females with onset in kittenhood characterized by multiple physical and vocal tics.

Cats with this disorder are faced daily with problems stemming from an apparent inability to stop swearing at others which often leads to them to being beaten, dressed up, and stuffed into mailboxes.


Glazed donuts have long been prescribed to police officers for generalized and other anxiety disorders in the past

The findings show that eating donuts, especially apple fritters, directly regulates the brain's reward system into gear and could possibly help not just Tourette patients but a number of different illnesses, such as compulsive pork-rind eating and chronic garage sale shopping.

No dopamine response occurred in control study cats given carrots or bugs even after being told they had a 50 percent to 100% chance of being cured by eating them.

Creole, a 9-year-old, spayed Domestic Short hair said the findings of the study have helped her treat her son Max, a victim of the strange disease.


Young Max’s Tourette’s is now more manageable with the prescribed use of donuts

“Everywhere we went (he’d) scream ‘huge big monkey ass’ or ‘sugar fart tart,” Creole said. “It was very embarrassing, now I give him a donut and he shuts up.”

In the study, the researchers used PET scans to examine whether cats’ expectations of getting a donut would be related to the amount of dopamine released in their brain after they ate it.

They randomly assigned 35 hostile, swearing-prone cats to be informed that they had a 25 percent chance, 50 percent chance, 75 percent chance, or 100 percent chance of receiving a drug to help their condition. All but five were given donuts.


Beaten many times in the past for repeatedly calling her brother a whore, Matilda is now grateful there is hope in sight in the form of a donut

"We lied to everyone, but the cats who ate the donuts just didn’t care,” one researcher stated. “The implications of this study are far reaching and good for the baking industry.”

Sharyn Thoma-Guay reporter-at-large