March 15, 2024
A Natural Way to Improve Your Vision: Create a Compelling Eye Chart
Inspired by Dr. William Horatio Bates, who placed an eye chart in classrooms and his natural approach to improving vision for kids across the state of North Dakota. Exploring ways to create compelling and multipurpose art for your home.
After our afternoon hike, my husband and I decided to visit Huss Brewing. On one of the walls I saw an eye chart that read various cities in Arizona. We spent some time pondering some of the lower and smaller words on the chart as we sipped on our local brews. I was reminded of a study I recently heard about improving eye sight.
Let's start with the back story! My husband and I have been increasingly on a health kick, where we have been constantly brainstorming ways to improve our daily habits... whether it be knee exercises to strengthen our knee muscles and avoid knee surgery in the future or cutting out processed foods, avoiding food dyes, and buying meat from a local butcher. More recently I was putting in my contacts, as I do every day, and my husband said "You're addicted!" and I was like "what?" He said, "just don't put in your contacts today!" I was baffled. I took a step back and thought about how I could do that.
I started looking up videos and obsessively researching the next hour. I came upon a video that mentioned Dr. William Horatio Bates study and instantly I wanted to put an eye chart in my room.
For those that don't know, Dr. Bates would hang an eye chart in classrooms and get the teacher to make the students do a simple vision test for a minute or so daily.
"At the beginning of that period 6% of the children were nearsighted. By the end of the year only 1 % was nearsighted. Because of this success in one school, the system of using an eye chart was introduced into all the schools of Grand Forks, North Dakota, where Bates worked. These schools used charts continuously for 8 years, with as many as 2,000 school children. But there was an unexpected result. The kids actually began to see better than normal. Children who already had normal sight, 20/20, became able to read 20/15 or 20/10. This was regardless of the light conditions in the room."
Looking at a typical eye chart is engaging for a little bit but I thought... Well, couldn't it be prettier? And, I remember back in school I would memorize the chart fairly quickly which I felt skewed the results of my vision test.
My passion of healthy living & natural remedies, along with my desire to rid my addiction of contacts has led me to the idea of creating visually appealing and versatile eye charts as wall decor. Something to rest your eyes on and admire. I would even go to recommend the 20-20-20 rule.
"Every 20 minutes of screen time, you should look away at something at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds."
MediLexicon International. (n.d.). 20-20-20 rule: How to prevent eye strain. Medical News Today.
Having an art piece that doubles as improvement to your eye health. 🤓 I hope this post serves as inspiration to others. Let me know your thoughts on this idea in the comments!
Although I have researched some natural remedies and I am inspired by healthy living, I am not a medical practitioner and I have not studied in the medical field. I am a devoted designer that loves to solve design problems with a desire to make a healthy impact on others through inspiration.
Check out my version of an eye chart!
