Traditional Diné food helps those suffering from heart failure, Navajo Nation study shows

SALT LAKE CITY — Traditional Navajo food could play a role in helping those in tribal settings with certain heart conditions.

Heart patients who ate traditional Diné food as part of a study into the effectiveness of such a diet on their health were less likely to need emergency care, according to the results of a study published this week. The study group was made up of 206 heart failure patients in the Navajo Nation receiving care at two Indian Health Service sites.

"By integrating traditional Indigenous foods with evidence-based nutrition for heart failure, we were able to significantly improve outcomes in a population that has long faced structural barriers to cardiovascular health," said Lauren Eberly. She's an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the lead author of the study.

Sonya Shin, an associate professor of medicine at Mass General Brigham in Massachusetts and senior author of the study, said the study showed that food can play a role in healing. It also demonstrated "that culturally grounded approaches are not only respectful but also clinically effective," she said.

The researchers split the 206 heart patients into two groups, one of them getting "usual care" and the other receiving "medically tailored meals" over an eight-week span based on traditional Diné ingredients and recipes. The ingredients for those getting the traditional meals included mutton, grass-fed beef, steamed corn, fresh corn, blue corn, squash and a variety of pumpkins.

"Researchers found that within 90 days, 40.6% of patients receiving the tailored meals experienced a hospitalization or emergency room visit compared to 57.0% in the usual care group — a statistically significant reduction," reads a press release on the study from Penn Medicine, an academic medical center. The Navajo Nation covers portions of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico where the three states meet, and the patients came from the Arizona and New Mexico sections.

Moreover, according to the researchers, those getting the traditional diet lost weight and experienced "significant" reductions in blood pressure. The study was carried out last year.

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Limited access to healthy, affordable food drives cardiovascular disease in many Indigenous communities, according to those involved in the study, which spurred the research effort. In fact, the American Indian and Alaska Native population has experienced higher rates of cardiovascular issues than other racial or ethnic groups, the researchers say.

"There is increasing evidence that direct dietary support, such as produce prescription or provision of medically tailored meals, may improve cardiovascular outcomes and disease-specific quality of life. Furthermore, there has been an increased focus in Indigenous communities to reclaim traditional Indigenous foods to improve health," reads a website about the study.

The American Heart Association's Health Care by Food Initiative funded the study and the Navajo Nation and Indian Health Services collaborated with the effort.

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