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color blindness disease

What causes color blindness?

What.causes Color blindness?

Color blindness is a genetic condition caused by a difference in how one or more of the light-sensitive cells found in the retina of the eye respond to certain colors. These cells, called cones, sense wavelengths of light, and enable the retina to distinguish between colors.

color blindness disease

Color blindness is a term that means that a person suffers from a defect in which he loses the ability to see one of the following three colors: red, blue or green, or the color resulting from mixing them together, which is very rare.

Symptoms of color blindness

may vary from case to case and may include:

  • The ability to see a wide range of different colors, so that the patient is not aware of the fact that he sees colors differently from what others see.
  • Being able to see only a few different colors while others can see thousands of them.
  • In very rare cases, the patient’s ability is limited to seeing only three colors: black, white, and gray.

Causes and risk factors

One of the most important causes of color blindness is the genetic factor, as a person is born with infection. In the human eye , there are generally 3 different types of cone cells, which are photoreceptor cells in the retina. Each of these types can receive only one of the following three basic colors. : either red, or blue, or green.

A person can see different colors when the cone cells inside the eye pick up different levels of the three primary colors mentioned. Most of the cone cells are located in the macula, which is the central part of the retina.

The causes of color blindness are due to the following:

1. Genetic factor

occurs on a genetic basis when there is a deficiency in one of the three types of cone cells or when these cells do not function as they should, as a person cannot see one of the three primary colors mentioned or may see different shades of the same color, or may see a completely different color .

This type of color blindness does not change or improve with time.

2. Other factors

Genetic factors are not always the cause of color blindness, as they may sometimes result from acquired factors. Color blindness may occur as a result of the following:

  • Aging.
  • Eye problems such as: glaucoma , macular degeneration, cataracts, and diabetic retinopathy .
  • eye injury
  • A symptom of taking certain medications.

Complications of color blindness

Color blindness may change the course of life for those who suffer from it. It may make it more difficult to learn to read, and may limit the possibility of progress in work in certain areas, but those who suffer from color blindness, whether  children  or adults, can with time adapt and compensate for their inability to see certain colors. .

Color blindness diagnosis

There are tests that depend on certain criteria that reveal how to distinguish between different colors. In one of these tests, the patient is asked to look at a group of points with different spectra and try to discover a certain shape inside them, such as a letter or a number.

The shape determined by the patient helps the doctor determine the colors that are difficult for the patient to see. In another examination, the patient is asked to arrange colored game pieces in groups of colors and spectra, and color-blind people are unable to classify and arrange the pieces properly.

color blindness treatment

Treating or correcting hereditary color blindness is difficult, but part of the problems of acquired color blindness can be treated and this is related to the cause, for example if the cause of color blindness is the cataract,  it can be removed by a surgical procedure to restore the ability to see colors again.

Surgical treatment can improve the ability to distinguish certain colors, and if the problem is a side effect of certain medications, it is possible to improve color vision by stopping the medication.

A color-blind person can take the following steps to compensate for his inability to see colors:

  • Using contact lenses or lenses for special glasses that help distinguish between different colors, but these special lenses do not guarantee the vision of natural colors as they may distort the image of certain objects.
  • The use of contact lenses or special glasses with the help of side shields or empty shields may help people who suffer from color blindness a lot, and enable them to distinguish between colors better by reducing radiation, people who suffer from color blindness can distinguish between them better when the lighting around them is not strong.
  • Spectacles with special lenses if the person with color blindness cannot distinguish colors at all, as vision depends on the rod cells. If he is completely color blind, he needs glasses with special or dark lenses equipped with side protectors; Because the sap cells work best in dim light, he may also need orthodontic lenses as contact lenses or lenses for eyeglasses; Because the vision by only the plant cells is less sharp and clear.
  • Learn to use the clarity or location of the color instead of the color itself, for example, he can learn to arrange the locations of the three colors of a traffic light.

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