Six-Year-Old Boy Uses Nintendo DS to Regain Eyesight

Ever since the age of four, Ben Michaels has suffered from amblyopia, or severe lazy eye syndrome, in his right eye. The condition gradually weakened the eye’s vision, and when Ben was at the tender age of six, was at risk of permanent blindness. Desperate, Ben’s mother Maxine sought the advice of Ken Nischal, a consultant at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. Nischal’s professional recommendation? A steady diet of Nintendo DS.

Following the consultant’s strange advice, Ben’s mom “forced” her son to spend two hours a day playing ‘Mario Kart,’ and made sure that he did so while wearing an eyepatch over his left (and healthy) eye, in order to better train his right. Traditional medicine it’s not, but, according to Maxine, her son’s vision “improved 250-percent” in just the first week of heavy gaming. “When he started, he could not identify our faces with his weak eye,” she told the Daily Mail. “Now he can read with it although he is still a way off where he ought to be.”

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