Deficient Color Vision Or Color Blindness: The Causes
Color blindness is an anomaly that affects the perception of colors of many people: this anomaly prevents them from perceiving and differentiating colors well. What are the causes at the origin of this alteration?
Poor color vision, better known as color blindness, is the difficulty of perceiving and distinguishing colors. This is the reason why many people confuse colors. Perhaps the question that comes to your mind now is: What is the root cause of this visual problem?
Some studies report that almost 8% of the population suffers from this vision problem. Being a fairly high percentage, we all probably know someone who suffers from color blindness. In the rest of this article, let’s find out the causes behind this anomaly.
Causes of color blindness
Color blindness is not a disease in itself: it is a difficulty in perceiving and differentiating colors. As this study points out, it is a genetic defect.
This anomaly is transmitted via the X chromosome. It is possible to be a carrier of the anomaly and to transmit it without suffering from color blindness.
So far, color blindness affects men more than women. This is because women have two X chromosomes. A woman only suffers from color blindness if both of her X chromosomes are affected.
In most cases, the root cause of color blindness is therefore a genetic cause. However, it is possible that color blindness corresponds more precisely to dyschromatopsia, a vision disorder that also affects color perception but the cause of which is any damage to the optic nerve or the retina.
There are still other causes. Alzheimer’s disease can also affect color perception, as can some medicines to treat erectile dysfunction or certain psychological problems.
Finally, in the event of exposure to chemicals in the workplace, it is necessary to protect the eyes well, as these substances can also affect color perception.
The different types of color blindness
When a person is diagnosed with poor color vision, they are also diagnosed with a specific type of color blindness. There are, in fact, different types of color blindness and the repercussions of this vision problem on the patient’s life vary depending on the type.
There are three main types of color blindness:
- Achromatic
- The person does not distinguish any color: he sees the world in black and white
- Dichromatic
- The person has difficulty perceiving blue, green and red
- Trichromatic
- The person perceives the three primary colors, but confuses them
Usually, a person with poor color vision is diagnosed with dichromatic or trichromatic color blindness. The first type is very rare, because our eyes are prepared to perceive colors (which is not the case in animals).
The different treatment possibilities
First of all, we must clarify one point: for the moment, this anomaly is incurable. Most people get used to their way of perceiving colors without this anomaly affecting their life too much.
For people who suffer from achromatic color blindness, the situation is more complicated. The fact of not perceiving any color limits them considerably. Nevertheless, these people learn to develop techniques for distinguishing between colors, such as that of a traffic light, for example.
In addition, there are glasses for color blind, a tool that has offered real hope to people with poor color vision. However, it is not a treatment, only a tool which is not always useful: these glasses are, for example, useless for people who suffer from achromatic color blindness.
These glasses filter out colors between blue and green reducing shadows, which can cause confusion. They therefore work very well for people who suffer from dichromatic color blindness. But we reiterate that this is not a treatment: a color blind person has to live with this difficulty all their life.
Are you color blind? Have you been diagnosed with poor color vision? We hope that this article has enabled you to understand a little better this genetic defect, which affects many people.
