Color Blindness – Causes, Diagnosis and Treatment

Color blindness is a visual impairment that makes it impossible for the bearer of this disorder to differentiate some specific colors. In many cases it is only perceived very late, after all, how to know that you are not perceiving colors that you do not even know, right?

Is Color Blindness a Disease?

Although it is not considered a serious disease, we cannot ignore it and much less diminish the importance of its consequences in daily life . Imagine the confusion when it comes to combining clothes, coloring a drawing, deciphering objects and even 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 it is possible to live with this deficiency without major trauma. There are several techniques and exercises indicated by ophthalmologists that help the patient to cope well with this limitation throughout life.

Know a little more about this disease and know what are its causes, symptoms, diagnosis and forms of treatment .

What is color blindness

Color blindness is a visual impairment that impacts perception and the ability to distinguish some colors (in some cases all colors), with a greater incidence in the difficulty of differentiating red from green.

Also known as discromopsia or dyschromatopsia , color blindness is named in honor of the first scientist to study this disorder, the Englishman John Dalton, who also was color blind, which led to a deeper understanding of the disease.

Color blindness of genetic origin is the most common , although it is not the only way to manifest itself. It affects more men than women, due to its relationship with the X chromosome, which reduces the chances of women presenting this disorder.

Color blindness can somehow hinder learning in addition to hindering the performance of simple everyday tasks, such as choosing fruits and vegetables, combining clothes and even in traffic to distinguish the colors of the traffic lights, for example. But in spite of all these problems, medicine does not consider this type of deficiency as serious, since the colorblind usually adapts without great difficulties to these limitations.

Types of Color Blindness

The colorblind can fall into one of the three types of the disease:

– Protanopia: This type of color blindness is the most common. Its main characteristic is the reduction or even the total loss of the red pigment. The colorblind person with the disorder of this type sees instead of red the color brown, green or gray, generally everything that is green will look like red, it will depend on the pigments of the visualized object.

– Deuteranopia: This type of color blindness is when the person cannot perceive the color green, in the place it is usually seen with shades of brown. Imagine a colorblind with deuteranopia seeing a tree? He ends up seeing everything with the same color, the trunk and the leaves. Confused right?

– Tritanopia: This type of color blindness is the most rare. It causes distortion in the perception of yellow and blue colors. A color blind person with this type of deficiency does not see the orange color and even the yellow one will see a light pink tone.

Main Causes of Color Blindness

The most common cause of color blindness is actually genetics. It is caused when a disturbance occurs in the X chromosome that impairs the pigment of some colors in the nerve cells of the eye located in the retina.

In addition to genetic malformation, color blindness can be caused by some other factors such as some diseases in the nervous system such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, by sickle cell anemia , leukemia and diabetes . Other eye diseases can also cause color blindness, such as glaucoma and macular degeneration.

High exposure to certain chemicals , some drugs used to treat psychological problems and hypertension can also cause color blindness. Even with advancing age, when the ability to see is reduced, difficulties in differentiating colors occur naturally, characterizing color blindness.

Diagnosis of Color blindness

There are some techniques used to diagnose color blindness. The most used is the Farnsworth, which is a test that uses plastic trays with capsules with different colors , the patient needs to organize these capsules respecting the order of color indicated. If the subject errs in the order or position of the colors, color blindness is diagnosed.
The diagnosis in the small ones, on the other hand, is firstly carried out by the parents, who must observe if the child has any difficulty with the colors , easy to perceive during school activities. If you notice any difficulty, the recommendation is that you seek an ophthalmologist as soon as possible so that he can perform the test and pass the necessary recommendations.

Color blindness test

One of the tests performed to diagnose color blindness uses figures from Ishihara. During the examination, several colored cards are displayed with circles of various colors and a number in the center of a different color, but only people who are not color blind can distinguish. If the patient cannot see this number, he is diagnosed with the visual disturbance. The number of errors and hits is relative to the degree and type of color blindness.

Below is a figure of Ishihara used in these tests:

After performing this test, if the diagnosis is positive, there is no reason to be overly concerned. Remember that there are ways to circumvent these limitations , such as decreasing the brightness to facilitate the perception of colors, for example. The most important thing at the moment is to make sure that you are indeed a colorblind and that the origin is genetic or acquired.

For genetic cases, there is still no treatment, for cases where color blindness is a consequence of some other disease, the tip is to treat the disease to improve the condition of vision. An important issue is that color blind people should not choose professions that demand a lot of vision , such as drivers, airline pilots and so many others, normal life.

See also: Eyes of Different Colors – Why Does This Happen?

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My name is Dr. Alexis Hart I am 38 years old, I am the mother of 3 beautiful children! Different ages, different phases 16 years, 12 years and 7 years. In love with motherhood since always, I found it difficult to make my dreams come true, and also some more after I was already a mother.

Since I imagined myself as a mother, in my thoughts everything seemed to be much easier and simpler than it really was, I expected to get pregnant as soon as I wished, but it wasn’t that simple. The first pregnancy was smooth, but my daughter’s birth was very troubled. Joana was born in 2002 with a weight of 2930kg and 45cm, from a very peaceful cesarean delivery but she had already been born with congenital pneumonia due to a broken bag not treated with antibiotics even before delivery.

Dr. Alexis Hart

My name is Dr. Alexis Hart I am 38 years old, I am the mother of 3 beautiful children! Different ages, different phases 16 years, 12 years and 7 years. In love with motherhood since always, I found it difficult to make my dreams come true, and also some more after I was already a mother.Since I imagined myself as a mother, in my thoughts everything seemed to be much easier and simpler than it really was, I expected to get pregnant as soon as I wished, but it wasn’t that simple. The first pregnancy was smooth, but my daughter’s birth was very troubled. Joana was born in 2002 with a weight of 2930kg and 45cm, from a very peaceful cesarean delivery but she had already been born with congenital pneumonia due to a broken bag not treated with antibiotics even before delivery.

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