Immune Health and Nutrition

In this episode, Lisa Jones interviews Ginger Hultin, MS, RDN, CSO, about the best ways to support the immune system through nutrition, common nutrition and immune system misconceptions, and suggestions on supplements.

Additional Resource:

• Hultin, G. Champagne Nutrition. Accessed August 15, 2022. https://champagnenutrition.com/ 

Ginger Hultin, MS, RDN, CSO, is a registered dietitian nutritionist, owner of Champagne Nutrition and Seattle Cancer Nutritionist, author of Anti-Inflammatory Diet Meal Prep, How to Eat to Beat Disease Cookbook, and e-book Meal Prep for Weight Loss 101 (Seattle, WA).

Lisa Jones, MA, RDN, LDN, FAND, is a registered dietitian nutritionist, speaker, and author (Philadelphia, PA).

TRANSCRIPTION:

Moderator: Hello, and welcome to Nutrition411, the podcast, a special podcast series led by registered dietictan and nutritionist Lisa Jones. The views of the speakers are their own and do not reflect the views of their respective institutions or Consultant360.

Lisa Jones: Hello and welcome to Nutrition411, the podcast where we communicate the information you need to know now about the science, psychology, and strategies behind the practice of dietetics. Today's episode is about immune health and nutrition. Today my guest is Ginger Hultin. Ginger is a Seattle-based registered dietitian nutritionist who owns Seattle-based concierge nutrition practices, Champagne Nutrition, and Seattle Cancer Nutritionist, where she helps clients solve complex health mysteries with an integrative approach. She has authored two nutrition books, Anti-inflammatory Diet Meal Prep, the How to Eat to Beat Disease Cookbook, and a new ebook Meal Prep for Weight Loss 101. Welcome Ginger, so glad to have you today.

Ginger Hultin: I'm super excited about this.

Lisa Jones: Yay. Well, we're going to dive right in. I'll start by asking you some questions. So the first one is, tell us about the best ways to support your immune system through nutrition.

Ginger Hultin: Yeah, I'm really glad that you used the word support rather than boost because I think the words that we use here are super important, so that was a really great start for sure. What we really want to make sure of is that we are giving the body all the building blocks that it needs for the immune system. You can't make your immune system hotter or higher than it should be, that actually causes other problems. So really what we need is enough nutrients, vitamins A, C, E, D selenium, zinc, B vitamins, and iron. We can talk more about these, but we need enough of those for the body to be able to protect itself.

Lisa Jones: I love that. And something I heard you say is you can't boost your nutrition, which leads me to my next question, what are some misconceptions that you can share with other clinicians, anyone listening to this podcast to help them decipher fact from fiction?

Ginger Hultin: The number one thing that I tell clinicians is not to use the word boost. So we don't want to overrev the immune system. When you do that, then you get into maybe sometimes if you're doing it through supplements, you're getting too much of a good thing, too much vitamin C, too much vitamin D, having more doesn't make your immune system better, but it can cause all sorts of issues with having too much of those nutrients. Also, when your immune system is running too high, it can actually work against you causing autoimmune diseases. So we're not trying to boost the immune system or make it go, go, go. We're really just trying to get people what they need in order for their health to do what it's supposed to do naturally.

There're so many functional foods and supplements out there that we're getting a lot of questions about them. So I think other clinicians just need to be really aware of the marketing that's going on, especially in the last couple of years about the immune system and be able to answer those questions in an evidence-based way when our clients ask us about it.

Lisa Jones: Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you for that. I do want to do a follow-up question about something that you mentioned. A lot of your clients probably ask you, so if you can pinpoint or give examples to our listeners about maybe one or two that you had that were just repeat-type questions that you kept hearing over and over again and how you handled them. I would love to hear that.

Ginger Hultin: Yeah. I had a really great client of mine who has cancer, so I'm a cancer specialist so I do a lot of that work. And in that world, it's really important to have a good immune system and to be able to not get sick, because that can keep you out of treatment and things. But this person, we were really working on cutting back on sugar. And I found out through her diet that she was drinking all this sugary vitamin C powdered drink, right? Because she's like, "Oh, I don't want to get sick, so I need to drink all these powders every day." But when we looked at the label together, there was a ton of added sugar in there. And so she was also having some GI issues like diarrhea issues and vitamin C causes that at high levels. And so I get asked a lot about vitamin C, but it's important to know that comes along in packages with lots of added sugar, with other nutrients you might not realize at high levels it can totally work against you. So vitamin C is one that I hear about a lot.

Lisa Jones: Vitamin C. And then the other thing too, when grocery shopping and you probably have your clients that say this, when they go in, it's becoming more overwhelming. And I'm a dietitian and I go in and I'm like, "How many more products?" I don't know about this product and I have to go home and look it up. How do you keep up with all that in your specific specialty area? Do you have any suggestions for others that are in a similar field than you are in?

Ginger Hultin: It is definitely a full-time job just to say, "What is going on out there? What are people asking about? What are what's in the marketing? What's in the news?" Another thing that you'll see if you walk into any store right now even now is elderberry. People are just asking about it. There're studies about it. So the vitamins are popular and the botanicals are popular. So I think it's important to look and say, "What part of the plant are they using? How much is in here? What's showing up as potentially helpful in studies?" So as practitioners, we need to go to the research to say, "Is this evidence-based? If so, how can I help answer questions for my clients? Are they getting a ton of extra sugar or other weird nutrients that they don't need?" How do we bring things down to earth for people?

Lisa Jones: Yes, that is such a great point too. And then if you can sum up one, if a client comes into you and says, "How do I navigate this?" And you could just say one sentence to them or one tip, what would be the best practice tip that you would give them?

Ginger Hultin: My tip for everybody always, especially when dealing with supplements or herbals is to look for a brand that is paying for third-party testing. That is something that I educate on constantly.

Lisa Jones: That is so great. I love that. What a good suggestion. And then they can kind go with that and then they're looking, and then that helps because a lot of the supplements aren't regulated and then people get all like, "Oh, I should take this. And it says it boosts nutrition." And then you're like, "No, stop saying that."

Ginger Hultin: Exactly. I mean, I think a lot of people don't realize that we do have this unusual type of regulation with supplements in the US. There are some good parts about it, there's also some bad parts about it. But what happens is I can just make a supplement company right now and just start selling and say kind of whatever I want, but somebody needs to check that. So there're other companies you can go to, I can go to Lisa's supplement company and say, "Hey, check out my company. See if it is what I say it is, put your label on this, that you've checked for quality." That's out there and that tells us that it's a good quality supplement, so it's very helpful.

Lisa Jones: Yes. Such a great tip. And then we already kind of touched on this because one of my questions is what are your thoughts on supplements? And any suggestions on how to navigate this area? And we already kind of talked about this. So I don't know if there's anything additional that we haven't discussed that you can think of that you wanted to speak to.

Ginger Hultin: Yeah, it's funny, because I feel like when we talk about functional foods and immune boosters or supporters right now, a lot of it is in the supplement realm. So what people are doing is they're taking high doses of vitamins or minerals and they're taking herbals like echinacea, like elderberry. So that is a huge part of the conversation. And I think when people think about immunity, that's where they go first, which is funny because actually, I think the better thing to do is to talk about food. But as far as supplements, I think you need to watch out for mega doses and not take too much. You need to know if it's interacting with other medications or supplements. You need to know how much you need. And you need to get a high-quality product. So working with a registered dietition this kind of thing is really important.

Lisa Jones: Yes. And I think too, just reading, even if you go and you read articles and it says, "Do this," that's not standardized for everyone. So that's where you come in. And it's really important with meeting with clients because you're looking through all those things for that particular individual and then you can make your recommendations based on that, which is great.

Ginger Hultin: 100%. 100%.

Lisa Jones: And then what is on the horizon for immune health and nutrition? What can we expect coming soon, if you know of anything that's on the horizon for this particular area?

Ginger Hultin: Well, I think we're going to keep seeing a lot of this chatter because we're still dealing with cold and flu season, new viruses popping up, kids going back to school, that's coming right around the corner. So I think we're going to continue to see a lot of marketing and chatter in this area. There's also a lot of really cool research coming out. There's some really interesting research about vitamin D and COVID for example, or omega 3s, and how they can help. Elderberry is pretty effective in some ways against cold and flu. So there is some really interesting research and as that comes out with more clinical trials, which are going on, I think we're going to keep seeing these products.

I think we're also going to keep seeing functional foods. So like fortified foods, orange juice with things added, or especially things marketed to kids and teens, I think we're going to keep seeing that too. So the sharper we can be as consumers and working with medical professionals that know the better.

Lisa Jones: So for dietitians, do you have any recommendations on how they can keep up with those skills? Brush up on supplements? Is there a go-to resource that you would recommend?

Ginger Hultin: One of my favorite things to recommend is the DPG, the Dietetic Practice Group DIFM, do you know them?

Lisa Jones: Yes. Yeah.

Ginger Hultin: They're so awesome. Dietitians and integrative functional medicine. I've been a member of that group for a really long time, but they have a lot of information about immunity, about supplements. They have an integrative course that you can take. So a lot of this lies in the integrative realm and that's a really great resource I think.

Lisa Jones: That's a great recommendation. Thank you. And for those that aren't members of the academy, would there be another resource that you can recommend for people that fit in that category too?

Ginger Hultin: Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of thing that I'm on almost every day and you have to get a subscription, but Natural Medicines Database is a really great place to go and check. If I want to know about akinesia right now, I just pop over there and it tells me if it's good, what the efficacy is dosing. So that's a good one. And I also really like Consumer Labs. I think they do an awesome job of protecting everybody and getting really great information about products and supplements.

Lisa Jones: Fantastic. So that's three resources right there. There you go, done. So you check one place, you check another. So thank you. Next, I kind of want to move into one story or an analogy that would showcase the work that you've done, whether it's been a patient or something involving immune health and nutrition, that you want to highlight that just top of mind for you.

Ginger Hultin: Sure. Yeah. I was actually just talking to a client the other day and she had got diagnosed with cancer right when the pandemic started. And has gone through the whole thing with surgeries, treatments, and really having a poor immune system because what we're seeing with a lot of people that have cancer is really poor white and red blood cell counts. So that makes it really challenging. You feel like you can't interact in the way you want to. Can't go to events. You just have to be so careful when your immune system isn't strong. But she was telling me that she felt that through our work with nutrition, she really had more skills to navigate that. Because we worked on increasing calories, and getting enough protein, those are the baselines. And then really looking at foods that do help with the immune system like iron, selenium, like vitamin C foods. And then we also treated a vitamin D deficiency by requesting from her medical team that she got a test.

So really we did support her immune system and navigated deficiencies and she has not been sick. And she's been able to stay in treatment and has done really, really well. So I've seen that a lot and the power of nutrition is important to recognize in this world.

Lisa Jones: Oh, it's so important. And that's wonderful news, so thank you for sharing a positive story about one of your patient clients. Have you ever had any that you worked with that maybe you talked to them about the whole boosting nutrition thing, but they still managed to just continue to bring you in more research articles? And then if that's the case, how did you then change their mindset to move on to currently where you're at? What you teach?

Ginger Hultin: My style of working with clients is to be really high level and share research back and forth. So I have a lot of really in-depth folks and they have a lot of questions and they'll send me research articles constantly. And what they send is these minute studies on this antioxidant or this antioxidant. And what I end up saying is we need to pull back, every antioxidant from fruits and veggies has benefit, but we need to eat it as part of the whole food. So I really try to pull people out of the weeds of the individual nutrients and look at how food is interacting as a whole. I think that's really what we need to do as clinicians and say, "Listen, let's eat a whole apple rather than dosing with quercetin because this is where the research is and this is the potential interactions and this is the benefit of an apple."

Lisa Jones: Yes. That's so true and such a great point because a lot of times we get lost in those little fine details and we think just because it says one thing that should be like the end all be all. And what you're saying is to look at the overall picture of everything, which I think is fantastic advice. And again, going back to each person's different and it's not a one size fits all approach. So thank you for that.

How about if you had to give one bottom line takeaway for the audience, what should they be aware of?

Ginger Hultin: One bottom line takeaway is that diet is super important for the immune system. You want to avoid deficiencies in all of the nutrients that we've been talking about, vitamin D, C, A, E, zinc, selenium, there're a lot that has to do with the immune system. You do need to make sure that you're getting enough of that from food in order to have a properly functioning immune system. So you do need to look at your diet and make sure that it's balanced in order to have an immune system that's working its best.

Lisa Jones: And that's what we all want. That's a goal that we all strive to do. So all right well, thank you for talking about immune health and nutrition. Is there anything else you wanted to add about what you do? Any suggestions for our audience before we move on to our fun lightning round of questions?

Ginger Hultin: I'm excited about that. Well, one thing that I did want to point out is this actually goes beyond nutrition. I mean, as you know, nutrition is important, and supplementing correctly is important, but we also really need to think about activity and exercise. We really need to think about sleep. And stress seems to be more of a challenge now than ever, and that can really, really hurt your immune system. So when we're ever having an immune-related conversation, we need to take a holistic and integrative approach and think about all the lifestyle behaviors that play into that. Excessive alcohol, that's not good for your immune system. So there are all these things that would come up during the pandemic and still are in our lives today that we need to think about. Because you can eat a perfect diet, but if you're super stressed and not sleeping your immune, system's going to take a hit.

Lisa Jones: Yes. And then something you said, just triggered a question for me because there are always all those studies about how drinking red wine can be helpful for you. So what do you say to somebody that comes in and says, "Oh, I just read this latest study on drinking red wine, it said it was good for me. Can I still continue to do that?" What would you say in terms of your immunity?

Ginger Hultin: Yeah, I mean the research shows that pretty much across the board with alcohol at low levels, if you have a half glass is usually what the research is saying. And so it's very low levels of red wine or other types of liquor can be beneficial maybe, especially for heart health. At high levels and that includes even more than one glass a day for women, and two glasses a day for men, that's considered a high level that can hurt your immune system, especially any type of binge drinking can also hurt the immune system. So is it okay? Probably for most people yeah, in small amounts. But at larger amounts, the research pretty clearly shows that it's very much not.

Lisa Jones: No, that's a great answer. And then two, I like just keeping to the recommendations because a lot of people think, well I only had two glasses of wine, but if you're a woman that's over what you should be having. So it's interesting that you have to keep by those guidelines. All right, well, thank you.

So we will move into the lightning round. And the first question I have is because I'm looking at a photo of you right now and behind you is your Champagne Nutrition. So I want to just get the backstory of your fabulous name for your business.

Ginger Hultin: Oh yes. The reason I'm a dietitian partially is that I worked in the restaurant industry for a really long time. I was a bartender and a restaurant manager for years all while I was going to nutrition school. And I really developed a passion for food culture and the joy of food and how important it is to people around the world and the connection between alcohol and food, so I just love that aspect of it. It's what made me passionate about nutrition in the first place.

Then I became very clinical and I love working with people that have chronic diseases. So I do all this clinical work, but ultimately Champagne Nutrition is about maybe having a glass of champagne, but even more than that, including foods that you love and really looking at nutrition as a whole, with the joy of eating and including more foods rather than cutting them out.

Lisa Jones: Yes, I love that. And the joy of eating, it's so important to kind of combine that. You want it to be fun so that your name exemplifies that. So if I had a glass of champagne right now, I'd toast you.

Ginger Hultin: We could cheers.

Lisa Jones: Yeah. There you go. How about since right now it's so hot out, as of this recording, what is your favorite way to cool off on a hot day?

Ginger Hultin: We are very into sitting in our yard and putting a little sprinkler on so that it's sprinkling our feet. That's what we do over here in Seattle. But it's not as hot here as it is where you are.

Lisa Jones: Well, what's your temperature today?

Ginger Hultin: Today is very cool. It's in the seventies, but it has been in the nineties and hundreds this summer to be fair.

Lisa Jones: Okay. I will trade. I would love to be there right now. We're at close to a hundred.

Ginger Hultin: It honestly feels refreshing right now.

Lisa Jones: Yes. So you might not need the sprinkler today for your feet, but if it was a little hotter.

Ginger Hultin: No, I honestly wore a sweatshirt when I was walking this morning. So it's a very cool climate today.

Lisa Jones: Very nice. And what was your top best summer vacation that you can think of and why?

Ginger Hultin: Oh, that's such a great question. Actually. I just had one this year in June. I whitewater rafted and camped in the Grand Canyon for 10 days.

Lisa Jones: Nice. So you didn't take any of the donkeys going down or anything like that, did you?

Ginger Hultin: Nope. We got dropped in at one point and came out at another point. But it was very hot there and we hiked and had adventures and swam and got in a lot of white water and had an amazing group and great food and it was kind of the adventure of a lifetime. I would recommend it to anybody.

Lisa Jones: Oh, that's so cool. It's on my top 10 to-do list. I just haven't. I've been to the Grand Canyon, but not that part of the trip that you're talking about. So speaking of, what is your number one tip to stay hydrated during outdoor activities? You probably had to work on staying hydrated because it can get really hot there.

Ginger Hultin: Big time. I talk a lot about hydration with my athletes or people living in very hot climates and then we'll get more into electrolytes. So when water just isn't enough, but I'm not usually in that situation because I'm not a pro athlete and I live in Seattle. But for the first time when I was in the Grand Canyon, I was like, "Oh I need to drink a massive amount of more water. And I need to think about my salt and potassium balance." So I was using electrolyte replacements. I was salting my food like crazy. That was really different for me. So if you're in extensive heat or for long periods of time, or doing something really physical, you actually do need to think about your electrolytes. And that was new for me to do myself.

Lisa Jones: Yeah. Did you find yourself helping others too? Telling other people, giving advice?

Ginger Hultin: Yeah. It was awesome, there was another dietitian on the trip. We discovered that we were both dietictan, that got super excited. And we were helping everybody and people were asking us questions about the food there and hydration. Actually, it was really cool there was a woman that was quite older and she was struggling with the heat. And so we were both helping her and keeping an eye on her.

Lisa Jones: Aw, that's so great. So you're like being of service and you're also on vacation, so that's awesome Ginger. And my final question for you, because we can't not ask a food related question. And what is your favorite food for the summer?

Ginger Hultin: Oh, that's so hard.

Lisa Jones: There's probably more than one. So if you want to mention more than one, that's fine too. If you just want to mention one, we'll take that as well.

Ginger Hultin: Okay. Oh, there's so many. I mean probably the main one is very unique to this part of the world, blackberries come into season here. Do you have blackberries where you live?

Lisa Jones: Yeah, I do. I get them every week. I do find myself eating them in the summer as well.

Ginger Hultin: Perfect. Yes. We have a window of maybe two weeks max and we like all wait and then when you go outside, everybody's picking them off all the bushes and there's like secret spots all around the city where there're blackberry bushes. So that's really a coveted Seattle summer food and it's very special here.

Lisa Jones: See, now I'm going to have to write another place to visit again, Seattle, blackberries, summer.

Ginger Hultin: Come in August.

Lisa Jones: Yes. Well Ginger, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for being on our show and sharing your insights with us today. Thanks for listening. And please tune in again and share your comments and feedback on our site. Have a great day and enjoy a healthier lifestyle with Nutrition411 in mind.

Moderator: For more nutrition content visit consultant360.com