What happens if you are color blind

Often, a person who is red-green or blue-yellow deficient isn't completely insensitive to both colors. Defects can be mild, moderate or severe. If you suspect you have problems distinguishing certain colors or your color vision changes, see an eye doctor for testing. It's important that children get comprehensive eye exams, including color vision testing, before starting school.

There's no cure for inherited color deficiencies, but if illness or eye disease is the cause, treatment may improve color vision. Seeing colors across the light spectrum is a complex process that begins with your eyes' ability to respond to different wavelengths of light.

Light, which contains all color wavelengths, enters your eye through the cornea and passes through the lens and transparent, jellylike tissue in your eye vitreous humor to wavelength-sensitive cells cones at the back of your eye in the macular area of the retina. The cones are sensitive to short blue , medium green or long red wavelengths of light.

Chemicals in the cones trigger a reaction and send the wavelength information through your optic nerve to your brain. If your eyes are normal, you perceive color. But if your cones lack one or more wavelength-sensitive chemicals, you will be unable to distinguish the colors red, green or blue. Inherited disorder. Inherited color deficiencies are much more common in males than in females.

The most common color deficiency is red-green, with blue-yellow deficiency being much less common. It is rare to have no color vision at all. You can inherit a mild, moderate or severe degree of the disorder. Inherited color deficiencies usually affect both eyes, and the severity doesn't change over your lifetime.

Mayo Clinic does not endorse companies or products. Advertising revenue supports our not-for-profit mission. If you do not have a color deficiency, you will be able to see numbers and shapes among the dots. If you are color blind, you will have a hard time finding the number or shape in the pattern.

You may not see anything in the pattern at all. There is no treatment for congenital color blindness. It usually does not cause any significant disability. However, there are special contact lenses and glasses that may help. Your ophthalmologist can treat acquired forms of color blindness. He or she will address the underlying condition or drug that caused the problem.

About Foundation Museum of the Eye. What Is Color Blindness? By David Turbert. Color Blindness Symptoms The symptoms of color blindness can range from mild to severe.

The symptoms include: trouble seeing colors and the brightness of colors in the usual way; inability to tell the difference between shades of the same or similar colors. This happens most with red and green, or blue and yellow. This rare condition is often associated with: amblyopia or lazy eye nystagmus light sensitivity , and poor vision Causes of Color Blindness Most people with color blindness are born with it. Most color vision problems that occur later in life are a result of: disease trauma toxic effects from drugs metabolic disease, or vascular disease Color vision defects from disease are less understood than congenital color vision problems.

Who Is at Risk for Color Blindness? Color Blindness Diagnosis A person with color deficiency may not be able to see the number 5 among the dots in this picture. Related Ask an Ophthalmologist Answers What is the importance of fundoscopy?

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Find an Ophthalmologist. Advanced Search. Three different kinds of cones absorb various wavelengths of light, and each kind reacts to either red, green, or blue. The cones send information to the brain to distinguish colors. The majority of color vision deficiency is inherited. It typically passes from mother to son. With glaucoma , the internal pressure of the eye, or the intraocular pressure, is too high. The pressure damages the optic nerve , which carries signals from the eye to the brain so that you can see.

As a result, your ability to distinguish colors may diminish. Macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy cause damage to the retina, which is where the cones are located. This can cause color blindness. In some cases, it causes blindness. If you have a cataract , the lens of your eye gradually changes from transparent to opaque. Your color vision may dim as a result.

Certain medications can cause changes in color vision. These include the antipsychotic medications chlorpromazine and thioridazine. The antibiotic ethambutol Myambutol , which treats tuberculosis , may cause optic nerve problems and difficulty seeing some colors.

Color blindness may also be due to other factors. One factor is aging. Vision loss and color deficiency can happen gradually with age. Additionally, toxic chemicals such as styrene, which is present in some plastics, are linked to the loss of ability to see color. Seeing colors is subjective.

However, your eye doctor can test for the condition during a normal eye exam. Testing will include the use of special images called pseudoisochromatic plates.

These images are made of colored dots that have numbers or symbols embedded within them. Only people with normal vision can see these numbers and symbols. If color blindness occurs as the result of illness or injury , treating the underlying cause may help to improve color detection.

Your eye doctor may prescribe tinted glasses or contact lenses that can assist in distinguishing colors. People who are colorblind often consciously apply certain techniques or use specific tools to make life easier. For example, memorizing the order of the lights from top to bottom on a traffic light removes the need to distinguish its colors.

Labeling clothing can assist in matching colors properly.