Color blindness is a visual impairment that prevents people with this condition from distinguishing certain specific colors. In many cases, it is only noticed quite late; after all, how can you know you’re not seeing colors you’ve never known, right?

Is Color Blindness a Disease?

Although it is not considered a serious disease, it should not be ignored or its impact on daily life minimized. Imagine the confusion when trying to match clothes, color a picture, identify objects, or even interpret feelings that we associate with colors. The world is colorful, and that’s how we all want to see it.

There is still no cure for color blindness, but the good news is that you can live with this impairment without major trauma. There are several techniques and exercises recommended by ophthalmologists that help patients cope well with this limitation throughout their lives.

Learn more about this condition and discover its causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options.

What is Color Blindness?

Color blindness is a visual impairment that affects the perception and the ability to distinguish certain colors (in some cases, all colors), most commonly making it hard to tell the difference between red and green.

Also known as discromopsia or discromatopsia, color blindness was named in honor of the first scientist to study this disorder, the Englishman John Dalton, who was himself color blind and was thus motivated to understand it more deeply.

Genetic color blindness is the most common type, although it’s not the only way it presents. It affects men more than women because of its relation to the X chromosome, which makes it less likely for women to have this disorder.

Color blindness can, in some ways, make learning more difficult and impair the completion of simple daily tasks like choosing fruits and vegetables, matching clothes, or even identifying traffic lights, for example. Nevertheless, despite all these challenges, medicine does not consider this impairment to be severe, since those with color blindness usually adapt to these limitations without significant difficulty.

Types of Color Blindness

A person with color blindness can fit into one of three types:

– Protanopia: This is the most common type of color blindness. Its main characteristic is reduced or even complete loss of the red pigment. Someone with this disorder sees brown, green, or gray instead of red; generally, everything green will look red, depending on the pigments of the viewed object.

– Deuteranopia: In this type, the person cannot perceive the color green, which is usually replaced by shades of brown. Imagine someone with deuteranopia looking at a tree? They end up seeing everything the same color—both the trunk and the leaves. Confusing, isn’t it?

– Tritanopia: This is the rarest form of color blindness. It causes distortion in the perception of yellow and blue. A person with this deficiency cannot see the color orange, and anything yellow will appear as a light pink shade.

Main Causes of Color Blindness

The most common cause of color blindness is indeed genetic. It occurs when there’s a disorder in the X chromosome that disrupts certain color pigments in the nerve cells of the eye’s retina.

Besides genetic malformation, color blindness can also be brought on by other factors such as certain diseases in the nervous system like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, sickle cell anemia, leukemia, and diabetes. Other eye diseases can also cause color blindness, such as glaucoma and macular degeneration.

Significant exposure to certain chemicals, some drugs used to treat psychological problems and hypertension can also cause color blindness. Also, with aging, when vision naturally declines, difficulty distinguishing colors may develop, characterizing color blindness.

Diagnosis of Color Blindness

There are some techniques used to diagnose color blindness. The most common is the Farnsworth test, which utilizes trays of colored plastic caps that the patient must organize in a color sequence. If the patient gets the sequence or position of the colors wrong, color blindness is diagnosed.
Diagnosis in children is usually first done by parents, who should watch to see if their child has any trouble with colors, something that can be easily noticed during school activities. If any difficulty is noticed, it’s recommended to see an ophthalmologist as soon as possible so the necessary tests and guidelines can be given.

Color Blindness Test

One test used to diagnose color blindness uses Ishihara plates. During the exam, several color cards with circles of various colors and a number in the center of a different color are shown, but only people who are not color blind can distinguish the number. If the patient cannot see the number, the visual disorder is diagnosed. The number of errors and correct answers reflects the degree and type of color blindness.

See below an Ishihara plate used in these tests:

After this test, if the diagnosis is positive, there is no need for excessive worry. Remember that there are ways to get around these limitations, such as reducing brightness to help with color perception, for example. The most important thing at this moment is to be sure if you are indeed color blind and whether the origin is genetic or acquired.

In genetic cases, there is still no type of treatment. However, in cases where color blindness is the result of another disease, the tip is to treat the underlying disease to improve vision. An important point is that people with color blindness should not choose professions that require excellent vision, like drivers, airplane pilots, and many others—but otherwise, they can lead a normal life.

See Also: Eyes of Different Colors – Why Does That Happen?
Photos: 12019, Ishihara 11