CardioRetinometry is a new science. It is the rapid assessment of the changing health of the cardiovascular system by the sequential study of digital retinal images captured by non-mydriatic fundus cameras.
Very small differences between such images can be almost impossible to detect except by enlargement and precise superimposition on a monitor screen for rapid alternation and comparison. The smallest variations in arterial health are manifested by the inspection of these time lapse images to become plainly visible. Particles of cholesterol can be seen to gradually disappear and continue disappearing when nutritional supplementation is accepted into the diet. They reappear when good nutrition is lost. In young people and to a lesser extent in older people, dietary changes alone, with the inclusion of much more fruit, can improve the blood vessels, re-establishing blood flow. Almost closed vessels are seen to reopen. The complexion of the retina darkens as blood supply is restored. Many formerly mysterious ocular diseases might now be readily explained.

Only good diagrammatic and three dimensional illustrations can properly convey the theory and haemodynamics of the deposition of cholesterol in the complex vasculature of the retina. The new science lends itself to the study of the viscoelasticity of blood, and it rheological properties in so far as they can now be observed to impact on the morphology of retinal vasculature.

As stated in the British Medical Journal and without dissent in the last 20 weeks, no refutation has been advanced against the statement that blockage of the veins appears to be established as the probable cause of the formerly mysterious fatal systemic essential hypertension. This kills many tens of thousands via strokes and probably many hundreds of thousands in a variety of associated pathologies to which it predisposes.

The principles of the new science of CardioRetinometry were discovered in the clinic of optometrist Sydney J Bush late in 1999 following the installation of the then first of the electronic fundus cameras in 1998. The search for microscopic displacements of blood vessels within the optic nerve head which might signify the onset of primary open angle glaucoma, led to the discovery of changes within the arteries which coincided with supplementation of the diet with vitamin C. The author had read and was familiar with the recent patents and theories of Linus Pauling PhD and Cardiologist Matthias Rath MD. These researchers had established for their US patent (and published in a paper in Medical Hypotheses) that vitamin C is a surrogate for Lipoprotein alpha. The author coined the term Circadian Atheroma to describe the daily (24 hourly) inflow and outflow of cholesterol in and out of the arterial endothelium. This third form of very low density cholesterol, not markedly found in animals, serves as a `puncture' repair for Man and higher primates when collagen cannot be assembled quickly enough to repair arterial damage due to stretching and compression with pulse waves. During rest and sleep the arterial damage is made good in a rate limited system. Excessive wear with insufficient repair then leads to heart disease. Marathon runners' deaths are explained in this way. Excessive exercise is revealed by CardioRetinometry as the cause possibly aggravated by lack of `hyper' nutrition to compensate..

The twin systems of Nutritional Prophylactic CardioRetinometry and Nutritional Therapeutic CardioRetinometry make it possible both to prevent and reverse arterial disease using nothing toxic whatever. The new science will allow rapid assessments of research successes and failures in the quest for perfect arterial health and, correspondingly, life extension.

The latter therapeutic form is only available legally in the UK to physicians without a signed medical request to the optometrist. The former prophylactic form can be practised by Optometrists without restriction and is available to most people. Results with hundreds of subjects have yielded a pattern of irrefutable benefits to the cardiovascular system shown by arterial clearance and actual reductions of adverse changes in the calibre and shape of blood vessels, previously portending serious disease.

CardioRetinometry is expected to quickly become the principal and definitive method of assessment of arterial health. It has already proved itself in the first informal studies to show every indication of being the most effective system of preventive medicine with the achievement of rapid and extremely accurate observations of blood vessel changes. It is expected to show when stroke and heart attack risk have been reduced to a degree never before imagined possible. Heart attack and most strokes should become rare.

CardioRetinometry has already demonstrated changes in the morphology of the retinal veins corresponding with partial blockage by cholesterol. Currently the received medical wisdom is that cholesterol does not deposit in veins. This is now seen to be untrue.

The originator of CardioRetinometry made this claim in the electronic British Medical Journal of 23rd July 2004 in a rapid response to a paper on the changes in retinal vasculature proving to be predictive of hypertension. Prof T.Y. Wong was challenged in that letter, again by the originator of CardioRetinometry, Optometrist Sydney J Bush. He followed this claim with another letter in the eBMJ Rapid Responses to Wong of 26th November 2004 partly because no physician had challenged his statements. In those letters he redefined scurvy as existing in ephemeral, easily diagnosable and chronic sub-clinical, easily missed forms. The latter is what has been proving fatal in the causation of now easily detectable and reversible blood vessel disease seen and recorded in the retina. This remains true at the date of entering this submission in the encyclopaedia.

The name CardioRetinometry was coined because the retina is being mesured directly as a surrogate for heart. In reverse, the name would have been RetinoCardiometry, clearly inappropriate for eye examination. The differential in blood pressures between heart and eye make the microscopic retinal changes correspond with far greater changes in the coronary arteries where stretching and compression also are maximal compared with the minimal pressures in the retina. This assists in establishing the system as a hypersensitive diagnostic tool to open many decades of research in the new science.
Sydney J Bush
PhD. DOpt. (IOSc. London)