What is color blindness? As a child, I used to believe that color blindness meant that you could only see in black and white. In actuality, color blindness is the inability to distinguish between specific colors such as blue, yellow, red, or green.
The human eye detects light by stimulating the retina, which is the layer at the back of the eyeball. The retina is made up of photoreceptors called cones and rods; cones allow us to see color in lighted areas and rods allow us to see, albeit without color, in darker areas. Normal color vision uses three types of light cones; this is called trichromacy. Anomalous trichromacy is when one of the three cones is altered and perceives light abnormally. The three different types of abnormal conditions are deuteranomaly, protanomaly, and tritanomaly. Deuteranomaly is the inability to see green light, tritanomaly is the inability to see blue light, and protanomaly is the inability to see red light.
Image Source: Ceneri
Color blindness is a condition that affects males more often than females. To be exact, it affects 8% of males and less than 1% of females. According to a 2014 study of male preschoolers, color blindness occurs most often in Caucasian boys: 5.6% of Caucasian, 3.1% of Asian, 2.6% of Hispanic, and 1.4% of African-American boys are color blind. On the other hand, there’s no measurable difference between girls of different races as shown in a study by the Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease Study Group.
Color blindness is not always inherited. It can be caused by aging, injuries to the eye, side effects of certain medications, and eye problems such as glaucoma, macular degeneration, cataracts, or diabetic retinopathy. Currently, there are treatments for color blindness, but there’s no cure. According to a study by researchers at the University of Washington and University of Florida, gene therapy, which involves replacing defective genes in the body with healthy ones, has cured color blindness in monkeys. However, gene therapy is not currently an option for us, as it has yet to be proven safe for humans. One liable form of treatment is the use of special lenses on either your contact or eyeglass lenses to enhance color perception.
For now, color blindness is a condition we can’t control or predict. For those who have it, it’s just another obstacle to deal with and overcome. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t stop them from achieving their goals in life, as many successful people, such as Bill Clinton, Christopher Nolan, and Mark Zuckerberg, are also color blind.
Featured Image Source: Colours by Gavin Golden
