Dr Chris Miliotis – Grounds for Hope Introduction

Today we are going to be covering biodynamics, the use of hemp, organic fertilizers, pesticides glyphosate, there’s a whole range of topics we are going to be covering. And our guest today is Dr Chris Miliotis.

Chris is a medical practitioner by training, but from the very early stage in his training, if you will, he embraced and explored the concepts of biodynamic organic farming and all that comes with that. So I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr Chris Miliotis.

Podcast Transcript

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. So today we are going to be covering biodynamics, the use of hemp, organic fertilizers, pesticides glyphosate, there’s a whole range of topics we are going to be covering. And our guest today is Dr Chris Miliotis.

Chris is a medical practitioner by training, but from the very early stage in his training, if you will, he embraced and explored the concepts of biodynamic organic farming and all that comes with that. So I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr Chris Miliotis. Welcome to the show, Chris.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:00:56] Ron, it’s good to see you again. Thanks for inviting me. It’s fascinating.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:01:00] Chris, your background look, there’s a lot we want to talk about today, but before we dive into that, I wondered if you might just share with our listener a little bit about your professional journey that has brought you to this point.

Dr Chris Miliotis’s Journey

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:01:14] Okay. Well, I started biodynamic farming or in a market gardening context. In 1971, we were the first to supply organic food into the city market at market prices. It was actually a sheltered workshop called Warra in Dural, Sydney. That really was great to get away from. You know, studies and out of my head and into this incredible world of soil and plants. Well, the journey is a thing in itself. Then I did medicine and well, interestingly, I, they failed me in a community medicine approach essay where I made the argument that there is the rise in cancer is associated strongly with the rise in the use of toxic chemicals in our food system.

And somebody researching. And she said eosinophils. I said I’m really interested in the eosinophils because I was working with mistletoe. And when you get it eosinophilic rise, that is often a good prognostic indicator of a good outcome. And so I started there, but I won’t go details. So that was 2004. I was doing a PhD, and I didn’t complete it due to funding issues, et cetera. And I went to a carbon farming conference, and I suddenly got the penny dropped.

You know, it’s like the lights went on and this is a path open up. We need to understand how we can use the soil as a sink to take mop up the existing air, to breathe it back in. And with that, allow the water to follow. It’s a vital connection.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:03:53] And we’re going to dive into that because, you know, we talked about we’re going to talk about this whole water issue. We’ve spoken on this podcast before about various cycles, the solar cycle, the water cycle, and all of that. So we’re going into it. It’s actually going back to your observation in the early 70s, which is so interesting. And I’m not surprised because the resistance to the link between environmental toxins and health is still strongly resisted. I mean, you know, historically, that’s always been the approach of medicine to very slowly follows that story. But here you are as a medical practitioner recognizing these connections very early on.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:04:44] Well, I was actually a medical student at that time because it’s not his first. But I counted a lot of people with issues related to cancer, you know, working in an adjuvant or a supportive way, including humor. We had a humor group, etc..

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:03] Laughter. Laughter being good medicine.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:05:07] But you know, because of this connection with this patient I had and my interest in eosinophilic when we use mistletoe, we get an eosinophilic rise.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:19] Now, just to remind our listeners who may not be as eosinophils are on one type of white blood cell.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:05:26] That’s right. And they’re usually associated with parasite exposure and interestingly when you do, you could kind of in a certain way say that cancer is like a parasite on the host. And so when you get an eosinophil, as you would, let’s say you have, where you get a lot of eosinophils, those eosinophils can produce a lot of strong substance like peroxidases. And you get to keep in where it comes up against the cancer cell, and it releases the peroxidases and basically digests them.

So it’s a handy indicator of the responsiveness to mistletoe. But I won’t go the details of that research other than to say that I’m concerned, in fact, going back to completing my PhD with a kind of more developed protocol, looking at targeting cancer cells and turning on the immune system. But to recognize the cancer cell. But I think we want to talk about soil.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:06:37] We do. When you mention about carbon capture and soil carbon being carbon, let’s expand on that a little bit.

Carbon Capture and Soil Carbon

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:06:45] Yeah, well, I must say, it’s essential to look at things holistically. Nature works as a whole, and we tend to reduce things down to parts. And the main focus is on carbon. So we’re concerned about getting carbon out the atmosphere by not using our sun, our solar energy and use sun of energy so we can use the solar panels or we can use the leaves, which are solar panels as well, to capture and create capture energy, create carbohydrates and feed the microbes below the root zone. So it’s important to contextualize this in a way that we understand that the what I call the plant solar cycle because we know the sun goes up and down. Now, when the sun is up, the chloroplast synthesizing photosynthesis.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:07:41] Some of that goes for the plant. Still, for up to 40 percent, actually, it gets sweated out through the roots. It feeds the microbiome, and the microbiome in a beautiful symbiotic way feeds the plant with the nutrients it needs and the particular interactions.

In fact, the particular substances that are elaborated by the plant, it will produce substances which will promote those particular microbes, which you harvest those particular nutrients from the ground to feed that plant. That’s a very highly specific interaction. So the plant solar cycle means that you’ve got energy coming in that energy feeding or nurturing the, through the roots that the microbes which in turn feed the plant.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:08:30] That’s the first cycle. The second is the carbon cycle; we know carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a body, so to speak. But in the soil, it’s a real boon. And we need to know how to bank soil, you know, with who the bank teller is, how we can take that currency, which is really the fertility cycle or beginning of the fertility cycle for the plant. I think I say carbon. Sorry, water follows carbon like night follows day. So when you get carbon in the ground and it’s structured by these wonderful geo engineers then the geo hydrologists come in these little pores in the soil makes the soil like a sponge.

So when it does rain of the hundred droplets, it folds. Ninety-seven of those droplets will go into the soil like a sponge. That’s really critical to give a perspective of that a one percent increase in soil carbon. Will increase the water holding capacity of the soil by a hundred and forty-four thousand liters per hectare. So water follows carbon.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:09:51] Now, the next thing is the microbes we know, the bank tellers, and they, like most television, make a deposit. Most of the money goes into the bank, and it just gives out in a slow or at least manner. What you need at the time, in other words, supplant what it needs at the time. So that’s the nutrient cycle. And they’re all interconnected. And the really the kind of the glue to put bringing all these systems back together again, which is being fragmented, is microbe’s cycle. But I will explain later. I could talk about we can power up the world and feed the world with the magic of microbes. And we’ll come to that later.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:39] Isn’t it interesting? You know, we hear about, oh, this carbon-capturing is so complex, we have to spend millions and billions of dollars on research. And yet every one of us in first-year high school let the answer to this and end it is, as you say, carbon dioxide plus water in photosynthesis.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:10:57] Yeah. And the energy from the sun.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:10:59] And the energy from the sun is just so ridiculous as it is so small.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:11:03] We get transfixed by technology. And a friend of mine I won’t mention who said, oh, there are these particular machines that can suck, you know, carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in cities and it’s equivalent to 25 trees. And I said, well, why not plant twenty-five trees?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:21] Who would have thought? Who would have thought? They don’t need as much maintenance.

Chloroplasts and Hemoglobin

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:11:24] You’ve got oxygen as well. This is what we are reciprocally related to the plant kingdom. We breathe in oxygen. We breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide, and they breathe out oxygen during the daytime.

So interestingly, I mentioned chloroplasts, chloroplasts, the central atom, of the chloroplasts molecule is magnesium, the central molecule of hemoglobin is iron. They’re the same structure. But for that central atom, so we can see we are a mirror image. In fact, we talk about the respiratory tree, which is an upside-down tree. And as we know, we need to understand, there are the Earth is a living whole being, and we need to understand that the earth is aging.

It’s going through menopause with hot flushes, called climate change. And we know that when we sweat, that’s a cooling mechanism. So water is the thermostat for the planet. Ninety-five percent of heat transfer is water. And we need to understand this incredibly important connection between carbon in the soil, making the soil carbon sponge through the microbes, absorbing the water, making the soil a reservoir for water, taking water vapor out of the atmosphere.

See, the main driver for the planet heating up is not carbon dioxide directly. It’s indirect; it’s a symptom. And I’ll explain that because that might sort of, you know, perplex people think this way, you put a pot with a lid on top on a gas stove. Now, the lid is like the atmosphere capturing the greenhouse gases, capturing the heat, and keeping it in. What happens when you turn the gas up? Which is in this case, the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, you’re trapping more heat, but that heat is coming back as a long wave, which then heats the body of water. Which is 70 percent of the earth’s surface is oceans. You’re going to get more water vapor.

So in fact, 95 percent of what drives the heating the planet is water vapor, and you get a for every unit of the increased CO2. You get a fivefold amplification of the heating effect through water vapor. So we are treating the wrong cause. How do we solve that? Well, clearly, if you can condense that water vapor in clouds. And, you know, when you walk out, and the cloud goes over in front of the sun, you get cold.

So there’s a cooling effect by re-radiating that heat back. But furthermore, when you get condensation and then that water precipitates and falls to the earth that nourishes the plants and then the plants like, we sweat what we call evapotranspiration is us sweating. We’re cooling the body because it takes energy to go from a water state to a gaseous state so that transpiration is a cooling effect. So the more vegetation you have and the most important thing in agriculture today is to keep all the ground covered. All of the time, like when you think of a farm, you think of tractors, and you think of bare fields.

Well, it just doesn’t cut it anymore because we are if you imagine this way, the intelligence and communication networks in the soil are primary the fungal elements, it’s an equivalent to our brain with our neuronal networks. What do we do? We’re getting we’re doing a lobotomy on the soil. We are dumbing down the soil by taking out that intelligent communication if one plant 100 meters away lacks nitrogen? It will then send a signal. I need some nitrogen, and they very kindly give it some nitrogen or some carbon or whatever.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:07] Yeah, Chris, you know, it’s interesting. I mean, we’ve done many programs that have made the point that ground when it rains on bare soil. Two things are lost from that land, one is the soil, and the other is the water. And it takes a long time for water to absorb into bare soil. But you put this figure of one percent increase in carbon with a hundred and forty-four liters per hectare of water. I mean, my God is one hundred forty-four thousand liters of water absorbed.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:39] That’s just incredible. And the other one is I’ve heard in the discussion about these microbes that it’s like having they are the plant’s digestive system, except it’s on the outside of the plant, whereas our digestive systems on the inside. And yet we could still survive on IV saline, you know, for a while. But we wouldn’t exactly thrive and thriving. This is exactly your point, isn’t it?

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:17:03] Well, that’s the Segway to something that the greatest travesty in agriculture is what’s called synthetic fertilizer, not just dwell on this, and I hope that sinks in like a good soaking rain. It’s quite extraordinary how we have mirrored our organization and is mirrored in nature and vice versa.

Now, we know that there’s a fundamental distinction that must be made in the future or currently for the future. The first is this that there are two kinds of roots. I mean, forget it, you know, taproots, et cetera. But there’s the drinking straw roots, the ones that are thicker and also give structural support to anchor the plant. They’re thicker because they got more solids inside, which acts as like a sponge to absorb the water. Now, the hair roots, this is developed over eons of evolution.

The hair roots, if you take, you get an increase of serious stuff by having a smaller diameter per unit of diameter, you increase the surface area. If you have a thicker root, you’re decreasing the surface area for that diameter. So this is the inverse relationship. So, therefore, why is that? The reason that is, those little beautiful hair-like roots go into these beautifully structured pores, that’s called pores or aggregates they’re micro aggregates made by bacteria. And there are macro aggregates made by fungi. Right.

So these are structured so made by these geoengineers of the microbes can then mean the roots go deeper to access water and nutrients, but can finally spread out their hair roots, too because the main distributor of the nutrients is the microbes. So the more microbes you have in what we call the root microbiome, the cluster around an extend out further through the fungal filaments, those nutritional highways, the more we have that interaction and increase surface area, the more nutrients are absorbed.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:19:36] Now, when you have a synthetic fertilizer, it’s a salt. You just add water, and it dissolves. So guess which root it’s gonna be taken up? It’s going to be forcing the plants through the drinking roots, through the thicker roots. You get an imbalance of the nutrient profile that stresses the plant, makes it weak. It puts out different wavelengths, which insects have different eyes to pick up these wavelengths. And they say there’s a weak plant.

It’s our duty to take that plant out before it reproduces. It’s so we’re shooting the messenger. We’re not listening to the message. We’re not reading the message. And so the problem is not pests. The problems, pesticides, and unless we listen to the message and we shoot the messages we’re doing with pesticides—absurd degree with depression, Parkinson’s or the newer degenerative new concerns.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:20:43] You know, we’re going to come back to talk about those pesticides. But looking at.

Pesticides

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:20:52]  Now we have our intestine is really part of the outside world. I mean, sure, we’ve got a mouth. We’ve got valves and the cardiac valve. And the sphincters, etc.. And it’s, but it’s really part of the outside world. And our health is dependent on the integrity of that gut wall membrane, which is only a layer of probiotics, layer of mucus. And then this one cell layer besides the muscular layer of the intestine. And if we disrupt that, we’ve got ill health. And that’s what we’re doing.

So what’s the connection? If you look at the villi in the small intestine, that’s like the root. But then it has little hair roots or microvilli, that’s the hair root. And we need that increased surface area, so for a given length of a few meters of the intestine, we’ve expanded the surface area massively by having not only the villi but the microvilli. That’s a parallel universe we’re living in. And if we destroy one, we destroy the other.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:22:05] Chris, I just love these connections. You know you make this point about chloroplasts and hemoglobin molecules and, the analogy between the roots and our intestines. Another area that I think has always fascinated me is this relationship we have with our microbiome. Because my observation is and my observation, but the oral microbiome, the gut microbiome, the soil microbiome all have a lot in common. And we have had an adversarial approach to all of them to our detriment.

What’s the relationship we have with our microbiome?

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:22:45]  If I have the microscopic eyes a little bit like the insect if you like. And I look at you see your skin microbiome. I wouldn’t see you. I just see this mass of microbes. Now, that’s protective. When we use soaps, and we’re washing all the time. But we wash too. We’re washing the oils. We’re washing that protective layer what’s happening in the soil microbiome. And I really came to really understand this.

I’ve been working with a microbiologist which you believe in China for seven years. We were I work remotely as a consultant advisor. Basically, we’re a team. We work together. And he’s fascinated by microbes in the soil. And we ask him; I come to that later if we have time. But while I sit down with about 330 grams twice supply through the growing sick cycle, we get a 38 percent increase yields. And those three hundred thirty grams, mostly microbes. About 500.

He identified 500 different species of microbes. So we’re not said before. That’s they’re the currency exchanges of the nutrients. It holds. So when we know, the first patent for Round-Up was a chelating agent, meaning they cleared out pipes, which would be getting the mineral deposits by putting glyphosate down the pipe, sent a chelated it, cleaned it off the pipe, and it was clear again. That was the first patent and the second patents for an antibiotic, it was an excellent antibiotic, in fact, to treat even tuberculosis and all sorts of things. Now, like all antibiotics.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:24:39] It’s a sad fact that we get is that there’s a downside and the downside is we get resistant pathogenic organisms in the soil. When I was working with my colleague, we were doing experimental, huge this part of the world, grows 50 percent of potatoes in the world, in China. So we’re doing very, very large fields. And we had five different farms with so many hectares in the thousands. And I said to him, beware of increase of water because you’re going to get you got a weak soil.

You’re going to get a fungal infection like Chordata if you like. And I said. Tell me the problem before it occurs. Not after it occurs any time went by, and I say this what you do before prophylactically, and I can get back to me, and sure enough, it got potato blight. So there was a fungus, and it knocked out, you know, this two-thirds of the crop, which is a lot of money. And we were very invested in making this work. And it dawned on me not only was the excess water, so it’s all about the environment, Pesta. And on his deathbed said it’s not the pathogen, it’s the environment. But in this case, the soil.

But what’s in the soil’s being corrupted by toxicants and fertilizers, and it depends on the latter later. So I realized when I looked in the ways to defend these plants left I was looking for other bacteria which would competitively inhibit or outcompete the fungus and spray it. And I came up with this beautiful one of my favorite soil. I mean, you know, it’s like a family. You shouldn’t really love one child, but this is the favorite child. If you’re in the soil, it’s bacillus subtilis.

Now bacillus subtilis it protects against plant diseases from pathogenic fungi or bacteria? So when your bacillus count comes down, you pathogen’s go up, guess what, you carpet bomb the soil with say anybody called from spraying cropdusters his antibody. We shouldn’t call it random. We should call antibiotic roundup. So you’re developing a resistance to the pathogenic ones, and you’re killing the Bacillus subtilis. Unbelievably, in our magic microbe formula, we have we harvest the microbes when the bacillus subtilis reaches the maximum, which is 90 days in a culturing process. And that’s one of five.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:38] So those three hundred and thirty grams of microbes, it’s almost like doing a probiotic for the soil.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:27:44] Well, it is. Yeah, it is probiotic for the soil, and the organic matter is prebiotic. Right. So you got prebiotic the organic matter and the probiotic, et cetera. So clearly, that kind of aha that’s what’s happening right now without really I thought the same’s got to apply in the parallel universe kind of concept. The same is happening to our gut. And sure enough, the literature is pouring out now. And let’s jump to the not the outer part of the world. It’s inside. It’s called the gut. And we know the properties said not well, all disease begins in the gut. You’d probably say 90 percent begin in the gut. In the last five years alone in Australia, it’s been a 25 percent increase in autism.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:40] Yes, say that again. Say that again in case our listener missed that one.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:28:44] I’m sorry. In the last five years, it’s hard not to get passionate about this.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:49] Yeah.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:28:50] 25% increase in autism. In the last two decades, the amount of urinary products of glyphosate has increased one 1250%, and it’s increasing and doubling every six years. And it got worse when we started to use or at least in America, RoundUp ready crops, so kids were having antibiotics for breakfast with their cheerios and cornflakes, antibiotics with their lettuce, or whatever. And God forbid, if they have genetically modified food, we don’t know because it’s not labeled. But they are getting a double dose of what basically kills the good ones, like Bacillus subtilis, lactobacillus Plantarum, and many, many others.

But the critical thing is it increases the Clostridioides species. Now the Clostridioides species, let’s take Clostridium difficile produces toxins, several toxins, one of which is neurotoxic. And that immune-compromised person having poultry or meat or pork particularly, which is loaded with antibiotics.

They can die from the Clostridium difficile, and it’s resistant to the hardcore antibiotic regimes intravenous. Right. And then sometimes they rescued by giving a fecal transplant, like inoculating the soil like we were doing in this case we’re using the fecal transplant. So, what’s happening is the Clostridium increasing, producing these neurotoxins.

Now. If you give mice GMO soy, after a period of time, they will manifest the following: they will become isolated,  they are usually social creatures, they have rigid, repetitive, stereotypical behaviors and they’re anxious in the human that translates to autism. When they analyze the stool, guess what they cultured? Clostridium difficile. That is like an open and shut case. We must ban glyphosate. I’m not a fanatic here. In fact, I spent three years of my life developing alternatives because when the ban comes, we’ve got a working currently on a low cost, really effective, organically certifiable weedkiller.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:42] Right?

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:31:43] And pesticides which are banned, something in Sri. There are 39 conditions related to round-up in Sri Lanka. They banned it because of poor paddy rice workers were absorbing the glyphosate ran up through their skin. Because I walk into the worries, I think the call and the paddy field and they were dying from kidney failure. Not non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Kidney failure. So they banned it. Guess what? The farmers, not the workers.

The farmer said, well, what are we going to use instead? Unless you can find a supplier alternative. It’s difficult. France is going to ban it by 2023. Vietnam’s banned it, Mexico’s banned it, Russia’s banned it, Austria’s banned it. And we still have the protagonists for big and cultural companies say it’s safe. It just depends on how we use it. Yeah, they are puppets and they AVPMA. You know, they’re getting the ghostwriting scientific reports from in-house.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:01] Remind us of what AVPMA.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:33:03] That’s the regulatory body, which says this is safe or this is not safe. The reality is that, in fact, I’m gonna be working with a professor at Queensland University to protect the Barrier Reef, to stop the runoff and the pesticides. And he said the combination of pesticides is far worse than we thought on marine life and the Barrier Reef. Suppose you’re going to use it if we can. We need to trap it by using here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:32] This is another issue that we’ve touched on, and that is the synergistic effect. I mean, it’s one thing to talk about a toxin, but we are really exposed to a toxin. We are exposed to it in multiple ways. And, of course, you know, we started this conversation with you in 1971 suggesting rather radically that environmental toxins affect health and were down markdown for that. And, of course, we’re still getting resistance to it. Even though life aside, I think they’ve just made a multi-billion dollar contribution to some peoples, and they didn’t do that out of the goodness of their hearts. Can you tell us a little bit about that? You know, they lost a case recently, didn’t they?

Synergistic Effect

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:34:16] Well, no. The 12,000 cases against Monsanto and basically Monsanto turned over about eight billion is now Bayer 8 billion, a quarter.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:26] A quarter.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:34:27] When they offered ten point nine American billion to pay off the 12,000. That’s two hundred fifty-thousand U.S. dollars each. That’s not much. No. The first case was Dwayne Johnson, which was 480 million, but it was scaled down through protesting of Monsanto. This just to say it never, is safe.

It was, as you know, the only real independent expert panel upgraded it from a possible carcinogen to a probable carcinogen. So that’s much higher up in the road and seeing the flood of people presenting class actions both in America and Australia and other parts of the world. But I, we have to go back to the fact that, you know, I remember giving lectures 10 years ago one in four people are getting cancer.

That can’t be. I said, well, put your hand up. If you know someone is close to you, who’s got cancer. Everyone puts their hand up. Right. So that’s the crude sort of statistical analysis if you like. But the thing is, it’s now one in two men, and one and three women have a lifetime incidence of cancer. That’s gone from one in four to one in two.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:45] Yeah, well, I don’t know. I don’t know your medical history, Chris, but if we are in the study of N equals 2 I can certainly put my hand up here because I’ve had cancer. I’ve had prostate cancer. It’s an issue that is very real. You mentioned that…

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:36:04] I’m actually going to be doing a trial hopefully, a human trial if I get through the other stages on, prostate cancer.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:36:12] And you mentioned herbs, you know. What are the alternatives? And you’ve been working on some of those. You’ve also been working on the fertilizer. And I’ve got this photo in front of me of the field that you have tested on. And one side has the fertilizer on one side didn’t presumably, tell us about the fertilizer. That’s good. You mentioned the probiotic. Is that it?

Fertilizer

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:36:38] Well, this is this whole thing. I talk about powering up the circular economy with the magic of microbes. We have to think circular. That’s what nature does. So my colleague in China, Professor Dongzhou, he spent three years of an experiment after experiment with a team of four to find the microbes, which, when added to food waste, will produce hydrogen. He got that at low cost, low tech, high efficiency. Six grams of wastewater from a tiny factory. Six grams of the starch wastewater. Solid, solid.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:37:24] We’re adding the two microbes and a couple of nutrients, like iron and a few other elements, basic materials, not expensive, produce seven hundred mls of hydrogen at one atmosphere, per pressure at twenty-five degrees C in 17 hours.

I believe that’s the cheapest, most efficient low tech. So the people in India win in their hearts, and they’re burning that sacred farmer’s go called cow dung and they’re burning a straw which belongs to the fields. And they were inhaling the smoke. Well, we can use that same technology on a large scale or small scale in Third World countries so that they can have their own fuel for cooking. They can have their own fuel for pumps. They can have their own tractor fuel. We can power it up with hydrogen. But there’s more. There’s more what it’s doing, more with less. It’s not the boron principle where you say let’s put more fertilizer on to get more back.

However, it’s using the magic of microbes. So we take it. What we’re working on currently is working with hemp, hemp. We’ll come back into its own. And let’s just put this into context in the big picture stuff. If 10 percent of the land, every farmer put 10 percent of land aside to grow hemp. Like they did in King Henry the VIII’s day. It was an offense not to grow a third of an acre. That’s a lot of bloody lands, hemp. And that’s what made the sales to fight the Spanish Armada. The British Navy. Right.

Well, we’re going to fight climate change. And the way we can do that is 10 percent of the land, let’s say grown, across all the farmland in the world, and it’s very it’s a very adaptable plant, doesn’t need much water, can grow on degraded land, doesn’t need fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. And it detoxifies the land.

It breaks down the toxins. It breaks down the pesticides and the heavy metals it absorbs, etc.. It’s a phytoremediation. Now, how much will that offset in our current carbon budget per year? It’s a 64 million dollar question. Sixty-four per cent of current greenhouse gases with 10 percent of the cash crop of hemp, which can make 5000 to up to 25000 different products from scarce evicts, scarce toilet paper pandemics to the fibers can be used to make light strong airplane bodies. In 1949, Henry Ford built a car that was made of hemp fibre plus powered it on hemp oil. They got an ax, and it bounced off the bottom.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:29] And we’re talking cannabis?

Cannabis

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:40:31] Yes, that’s a good question. The sad thing is cannabis is like a bad cousin if you like. We’re talking about hemp, which is industrial hemp. It’s a cousin. It’s a distant cousin. All right. There are several species. But it’s mainly; you can only in Australia grow industrial hemp for fiber and other things. If in some states it’s one percent THC. And in other cases, it has been below 0.5. So you’re not going to get high on it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:04] But the cannabis. But the CBD oils are in there.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:41:08] Yes. The cannabinoids are there, but not the THC.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:11] Right. Because I know medicinal cannabis and we’re going to be doing the program on that very soon is making a comeback. We’ve done a program on psychedelics that’s making a comeback as well. But here you are talking about hemp as a having, how many different functions. Did you say it had?

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:41:28] Well, conservatively 5000. But I’ve read up to 25,000.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:33] And I know you’ve sent me a photo. I mean, what am I looking at here, Chris?

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:41:37] Well, in that context. But what we can do, I just put in context. We’ve just been through a horrific fire, catastrophic fires. We need to think outside the tinder box and start using materials that one is sustainable; two draws down carbon dioxide. And three are fireproof. So we’ve got that in hemp definitely.

Then we take the liquid, which we use we can generate hydrogen from the hemp. The internal part, which you make the bricks from the panels that’s herd. That’s high in sugars or carbohydrates rather. Then we generate the hydrogen because the microbes are two microbes like the carbon skeleton and part of the hydrogen they reform into hydrogen and go off into collection as a vessel. So we then take the fluid so we can take the fiber and still make very strong hempcrete or panels. In fact, it’s even stronger because the carbohydrate component is not giving it strength. It’s a silica fiber, so we’re actually improving the structural properties. Then we take the fluid we can make this potent fertilizer. And you’ll show those photos.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:42:55] Yes.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:42:56] Dramatic. And this is on a mining site, a revegetation project. On the left is our liquid fertilizer. That’s leftover plus our 500 species of microbes. And you get a massive response, 100 percent cover. The other is, and that’s without irrigation.

The other was with another companies microbes, with irrigation considered pipes. And it’s like a 20 percent cover, the other 100 percent cover. And the heart is like, what, full five times as much. So it’s a massive difference. And so that’s the first thing. The second thing, because my job is to see how we can value add even more. So there’s another liquid fraction I can make an organic herbicide.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:43:49] In fact, I’ve got a name, it’s called Agent Green. And then we could when we use the hemp leaves, we can make with other allowed organic inputs an organic pesticide. And a pest deterrent and add a folia fertilizing of what you fertilize through the leaf until you get it so back to balance. So that’s good stuff. That’s what we can do. So we can make my statement is we can power up the world because hydrogen is going to be the future.

We can feed the world because we increase the yields with the magic of microbes. I’m working on a project with another professor at Flinders University to I am predicting currently we’re getting up to 38 percent increase yields, not by adding more fertilizer, by adding microbes. I reckon we’re gonna go above 50 percent. And I’m aiming for 70 percent. We’ll get a 70 percent increase yield. That’s yet to be proven, but that’s my prediction.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:51] Well, it’s a great thing, to I mean, you know, when we think about all the activity that’s going on in the world of medicine and the respect that the microbiome is receiving and some of the treatments, I mean, you know, this is not, as you say, the connection between what’s going on in the plants and what’s going on in our bodies is one to one. You also but you touched on biodynamics. You mentioned biodynamics. And I know we could talk at great length about biodynamics, but in a nutshell, you know what, Tell us what biodynamic. What it is.

Biodynamic

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:45:30] Well, you know, I analyze the meaning of the word bio’s life, and we didn’t really understand what life is. We think we do. But you can’t measure it. You can see it manifesting things. We haven’t really got a scientific understanding of what life is. Believe it or not, we just know we are alive. Hopefully, so Bio and Dynamics were working with the rhythms of Gaia.

We’re working with the rhythms of the living being of the Earth. It breathes in the winter breeze off in the summer. We know that the carbon dioxide levels go down in the summer because of the inspiring CO2. And it goes up in the winter, which is opposite to what I said before. But in terms of CO2, well, that’s okay, because we’re breathing in oxygen. We’re bringing out CO2. So if as the winter is, we’re breathing in the earth, it’s breathing in. It’s expiring more CO2 with the breakdown of the leaves, et cetera, in the autumns.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:46:33] So so it’s the rhythms of life. But I won’t get too much. Probably best described as a soul alchemist. And that’s my latest definition of myself and. I’ll start by saying this. You wouldn’t believe the percentage of a plant that comes from the atmosphere compared to the soil just have a rough guess. I’d be embarrassed to say something.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:04] I’m going to say 70 percent, 70 percent.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:47:06] Well, that’s much higher than most people said. It is like the water content of the plant, but it’s actually 95 percent of the plant’s substance came from the atmosphere, including trace elements. What have I got to base it on? OK. Paterson’s curse, otherwise known as salvation Jane. Occurs when, you know, it’s got a purple flower is when you got stress. You know, usually, drought conditions, and I call it salvation Jane because the cast can eat a bit of it, but not too much. Now, if you analyze the trace element, it’s got a very high concentration of copper.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:47:51] Guess what is lacking, if not soil? Kids.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:56] Well, I can’t say zinc.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:47:58] No, no. I just told you a copper. So the weed is trying to get a succession going. Well, it’s collecting it from the atmosphere is very, very small doses. All trace elements there are small doses, and each plant has the capacity to take in those nutrients. Now, the other option is sort of trying to kill the person’s curse is to put copper sulfate not that I’m saying that’s what you do or you make a weed tea or you slash it may bring the copper to the soil. And you’ll find that in time, as long as you get it before seeding, that that will go down. Interestingly.

Now, when we one of the distinguishing things about biodynamics, by the way, the best wines in the world, the French wines are biodynamic wines with about 2000 dollars a bottle. And that’s a recent vintage because it brings up a true wow that the soul or the tastes of the soil. So it enhances the biological processes in this on the whole farm. And farmers need to learn two things besides what we said—cover 100 percent ground. Hundred percent of the time covered. The second thing is fire on the air, not the soil.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:49:22] That means diverse species, diverse cover crops.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:49:28] Nice.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:49:29] Right? So, and the third thing is that the task of the farmer is with the assistance of microbes to grow humus.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:49:41] Once you grow on humus, which is the most stable form, carbon will last for hundreds of years. Of course, these are the fluxes around that. You need those labor pools of carbon. That’s that sponge we talked about. That’s that beautiful breathing lung. We should see the air sucks in our lung. We need to understand that the soil is like a lung.

It’s actually the major lung to bring down CO2. Certainly, you can talk about the marine lung because we know the ocean supplies 70 percent of our oxygen. But unfortunately, the carbon dioxide is taken up in seaweed. A lot of that breaks that, and it’s readmitted. Right. So the major lung is not the forest. Sure we need to plant forests.

You know, we say the lungs. The Earth is an Amazon. The lungs of the earth are the soil. And Starner made who was the father of biodynamics, which is the first form Morganics in the world. She said, well, the farmer walks across the field. He should get the feeling that he’s walking on the diaphragm, of the earth.

So we’re talking about these breathing processes. The thing that’s happening to chemical soil. It’s becoming compacted, and we put it on life support. But getting the surgeon’s knife could tractors with tractor blades and then force-feeding it through the IV drip. You spoke about water-soluble salts. That is a recipe for disaster. And Starner predicted that way back in 1924. You said if we continue to use it was just coming into its own. If we do that, we’ll have a calamity on our hands, and humanity will be in trouble. He also predicted the.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:51:28] Please stop banging, stop banging, please. You’re getting carried away for God’s sake. I’m sorry for our listeners.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:51:37] I’m pounding the message to you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:51:38] You are you’re making a solid point there. Chris, I love it. I love your passion.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:51:43] So many times from that point round that we need to understand that it’s really we farm above the ground, which is really if you look at had this picture that the plant is an upside-down human being. So we’ve got that the root system, which we talked about the filaments. Right. That’s the root system. So that’s our brain upside down. So imagine I met a guy buried up to his waist. That’s his diaphragm. Where you walk on the soil, and all that’s above is the metabolism. The metabolic processes that are actually above the ground, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:27] Which kind of dovetails into the digestive system is below the ground, isn’t it?

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:52:31] No, it doesn’t. So I’m trying to say the digestive system is above the ground.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:37] Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Because I once visualized the soil microbiomes breaking down the nutrients in the soil and providing them for the plant. But you’re saying actually, no. 95 percent of the plant actually comes from the air.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:52:54] Metabolic processes are actually aboveground in the leaf. That’s where it’s all being made, the sugars are being made, etc.. So raw materials are coming. Most of it’s coming from the atmosphere when the sun’s giving it energy.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:53:10] And the trace elements are also coming from the atmosphere.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:54:20] Yeah. Okay. I’ll just finish my point. So we started with Patterson’s curse, right. Now, if Dr Hauschka PhD biochemist does this work, he was strongly influenced by, started some amazing work. But he says if you have a rosebush. And you plant, a rosebush, if you analyze the soil, is no titanium.

After a while, the titanium will increase year on year. I’ll take another experiment because one of the distinguished things about biodynamics is got to lots of preparations. One is the compost preparations, which allows the healthy breakdown, assimilation, and producing more complex substances, primarily humans. But many other complex substances.

It’s a wonderful process so that the calm past perhaps, and we use what we call the 500, which is the soil producing, which will help the humus formation. And then we have the other one—the silica, which works with the light metabolism of the plant. Now, I’ve been to I went to Greece two years ago. I spoke to an olive grove. He got in Crete. Crete has the best olive oil in the world. He got the gold medal with an application to bat more, with less.

Seventy-five grams per hectare of the soil building on five grams per hectare of the light metabolism, enhancing one way with the chloroplasts got the highest level of phenols. So what’s the normal valuing of phenols? He said to how it is getting over a thousand. It was a pharmacy, the greatest job he had arthritis in, he said, and kept her awake at night in her knees.

He said, rub the oil and the pain went away. We now say to the microbiome as well, and that’s why the Mediterranean diet is so good. So of these biodynamic substances. Seventy-five grams, five grams per hectare got the gold medal. So we work with the soil. We work with the light and all the other metabolic processes above the ground. And then we work with the metabolic.

We work with the compost preps just to give you two things to be gone about. Each one of them. And they will integrate. Essentially, that’s the first one made from the valerian flower sorry, the yarrow. And in New Zealand, where they got immature soils, geologically there’s no selenium. And you would know in New Zealand; they have to inject the animals with selenium to prevent white muscle disease. After three years applying the preps, they didn’t need to do that anymore. It got selenium in the soil, came from the atmosphere. So the first biodynamic preparation for the compost actually collects the trace elements from the atmosphere.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:56:26] The last one, the last one, and I’ve seen this with my own eyes. And I’ll tell you a story; I’m not made up. It’s made from the valerian flower. And hopefully, it’s no kids listening, but it’s like an earthworm aphrodisiac. Right. So my other monk here is one whisperer.

Now, I did a trial. We were we’re recycling a green light from the city. And they were dumping huge trucks, similar, you know, semitrailers dumping. It was a huge mountain of it along the side of this farm. So I went and put the preps in. And then I use my 500 microbes, and we had the feels the same as sprayed only half. About six weeks later. The lady from the farm rang me and said the sudden earthworms in the park you spray. I said I told you. I said, why don’t you do? Is get back at a square metre—one spy dip such as those ten-fifteen centimetres. And count the worms and then do the same in the field above.

Well, you know, you need to be more replicates. But, you know, do you want to cadaver to do it all day? So there were four times as many earthworms in the one which was treated with 500 microbes. I’ve seen that over for 75 years. We’ve seen the same evidence.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:57:55] Yeah, look.

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:57:58] If you want to find one thing that tells you that sort of healthy, it’s how many earthworms.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:05] Now, listen, we’ve covered so much territory, and there’s so much more we could talk about. And we’re going to finish up. I just wanted to take a step back now. I know from your role as a worm whisperer and the soil alchemist and medical practitioner, are you wearing a lot of hats there. I want to take you to take a step back here because we’re all on a health journey through life. And what do you think the biggest challenge is for us for individuals on that journey? In the modern world?

The Biggest Health Challenge

Dr Chris Miliotis [00:58:36] Well, we know that Linus Pauling said that all trace element deficiencies are related to chronic degenerative disease. That’s number one. Second thing, we know that all the 90 plus diseases start from the gut that’s mediated by inflammation. So you break down the gut wall barrier, you’ve got 70 to 80 % of the immune cells wrapped around the gut. When you’ve got a leaky gut, and of course glyphosate actually opens up the gateway as zonulin as it stimulates zonulin production. So you’re opening up the floodgates, though, that bowl content is hitting those cells which are immune cells.

That starts a bushfire. An inflammatory cascade via the cytokines and we know that the breach of the gut wall barrier, it means you get a breach of the blood-brain barrier and the structure of the gut barrier and the blood-brain barrier and the placental barrier is the same single architecture. So the poor kids are being affected when the mother’s eating food that is not grown organically. They’re getting a flood of these toxicants from our food. So we’ve got to do this now.

Could the call for action, what people don’t realize the soilution to climate change lies beneath our feet. And it depends on what we choose to eat. So there’s I asked the audience for the 30-day climate change challenge. Have 100 percent organic. Only eat within a six-hour window that will protect against cancer. I could talk about experiments which dramatically showed that we were overnourished. We’re overfed and undernourished. And the third thing is to add microbes via some fermented food or drink with those two meals. That’s a recipe for change. And not only that, there’s an experiment that I know we got to finish.

A Russian pathologist did an experiment, which you couldn’t do now. He put a tag; a radio let radioactive, a tag radio isotope tag and he tagged the fermented food and guess what most it was absorbed. And the same food not fermented. Probably 70 percent was absorbed. So when we say organic foods too expensive.

Well, we cut our bill down by eating two meals a day. And we cut our bills to dentists and doctors and everyone else; I have to say. But secondly, we get more bang for our buck because we’re actually absorbing more nutrients and we’re getting the probiotics which break down like the microbes, break down the organic matter and make it bioavailable nutrients, breaks down the food, and makes it more bioavailable, plus enzymes plus vitamins.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:01:29] Chris, so much there. Thank you so much for sharing yours. We’ll have a link we can have links to. You know, you’ve got some great stuff going. So, you know, it’s been a pleasure to have you on, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr Chris Miliotis [01:01:43] I’ll tell you what. Thank you so much. And please, 30-day climate change challenge and 100 percent organic. Two meals a day within six hours. Wisdom’s when food and drink, not beer.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:01:55] All right. Thanks, Chris.

Dr Chris Miliotis [01:01:58] Cheers mate!

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:02:02] Well, there it is. Chris is obviously passionate about so many topics that we’ve covered on this podcast as well. And I’ll have links to his some of those projects that he’s discussed today. Now, don’t forget, we’ve also got the Unstress with Dr Ron Ehrlich app. And of course, don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes. We’ve got her course coming up in the second half of the year. So look out for that and so much more. So until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be Well.

 

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.