South Dakota State University research showed an intervention strategy based on the Native American spiritual concept of the Medicine Wheel brought positive changes for diabetics.
While the study was inconclusive about the strategy's overall effectiveness in controlling type 2 diabetes, the culturally based nutrition intervention promoted small, but beneficial, changes in weight, according to a study published in the September 2009 issue of the "Journal of the American Dietetic Association."
Professor Kendra Kattelmann of SDSU's Department of Nutrition, Food Science and Hospitality did the study with the help of former SDSU graduate student Kibbe Conti, now in private practice as a dietitian, and associate professor Cuirong Ren of SDSU's Department of Plant Science. Their journal article, "The Medicine Wheel Nutrition Intervention: A Diabetes Education Study with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe," describes a six-month, randomized, controlled trial carried out in 2005.
Kattelmann credits Conti with developing the Medicine Wheel Model for Nutrition. The concept behind the Medicine Wheel that makes it promising as a nutritional model is the idea that everything should be in balance, Kattelmann said.
"The project was still using dietary guideline concepts but using the Medicine Wheel to interpret them," Kattelmann said. "We were trying to see if Cheyenne River Sioux tribal members would embrace that traditional pattern that would help them control their total energy intake and also control their blood glucose levels.
"Traditionally their diets were really high in protein and low in carbohydrates because they're hunter-gatherers. So what we tried to do with this study was not necessarily take the traditional foods but take the macronutrient pattern."