Color Blindness

SERVING LOVELAND, FORT COLLINS, GREELEY, LONGMONT & AREAS NEARBY IN COLORADO

Color blindness is a vision problem that makes it hard to tell the difference between certain colors. If you are color blind, it usually does not mean you see everything in black and white or shades of gray. Full color blindness is very rare. Most color-blind people have trouble with just 1 or 2 colors. The colors they have the most difficulty telling the difference between are red and green. Shades of red and green might look brownish to a color-blind person.

If you or your child need help coping with color blindness, please contact Kirk Eye Center today by calling 970-669-1107 for service in the Loveland, Colorado, area.

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How Does It Occur?

You see in color because the retina at the back of the eye has special cells called cones. There are 3 types of cones: cones for red light, cones for green light, and cones for blue light. These 3 types of cones mix the colors together to create all of the colors people see. In a color-blind person, the red and green cones are very similar to each other and try to see both colors of light. This causes an abnormal mix of color and color confusion.

Color blindness is usually an inherited and lifelong condition. It is most commonly passed from mother to son. A woman can be a “carrier” of the gene but will usually not be colorblind herself. Men cannot be just carriers of the gene. If a man has the color blindness gene then he is colorblind. For that reason, men are more commonly color blind than women.

Rarely an eye disease can cause you to become colorblind later in life. Usually color blindness is not caused by a disease.

How Is Color Blindness Diagnosed?

Our eye doctors at Kirk Eye Center can do a very simple test for color blindness. You look at a special test book that has a pattern of small colored circles. Some of the circles on the page are a different color and form a number. A color blind person will not be able to see the number because it will appear as the same color as the other circles on the page. The test book has about a dozen of these patterns in it to make sure of the diagnosis and to judge the severity of the color blindness. This test is usually easy enough that it is possible to get good results even with young children.

How Is It Treated?

Usually there is no need to treat color blindness. People with color blindness learn to tell the differences between colors. For example, green might look brighter than red. If a person is severely color blind, occasionally a red tinted contact lens is prescribed for just one eye. This may help the person see colors a little better.

How Can I Take Care of Myself?

Usually nothing needs to be done. You many find that some tasks are frustrating such as:

  • Judging traffic lights
  • Reading test strips or identifying other chemical reactions
  • Coloring with markers or crayons
  • Matching clothes
  • Reading color-coded maps or weather charts
  • Knowing if fruits are ripe or if meat is rare or well done

In some cases, a colorblind person may need to avoid careers that require excellent color vision. However, there are many colorblind electricians who can easily work with multi-colored wires. Most of the time you can learn to adjust by using other cues such as looking for the position of the light on a traffic signal rather than the color or looking for subtle color differences (red may appear darker than green). Parents may need to give their colorblind child more assistance picking out clothes until the child can learn how to match colors.

Schedule A Color Blind Test Today

For more information about adjusting your vision to accommodate color blindness, please contact Kirk Eye Center online or call 970-669-1107 today. Our office serves patients from Fort Collins, Windsor and other communities near Loveland.

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