Color Blindness Cure & Solutions

Only a year ago the concept of a cure for color blindness was considered straight up impossible, but a recent study has shown amazing hope for a cure after 2 researchers successfully cured some monkeys with a simple injection of cells. For the interim however, color blindness must be handled as always: Prevention, Correction, Education.

Preventing Color Blindness: Eye Care

Whilst the vast majority of color blind people have obtained the disease through inheritance, there are still real risks in everyday life that can cause the condition to develop in a person of any age. Eye care is predominantly about common sense and awareness. Eye care is not limited to color blindness, but serves to help avoid many eye conditions that can result from some form of trauma to the eye. Some things are unavoidable, we don’t plan to receive severe trauma to the head through sports, or even a car crash – but being aware can help lower the risk of damage to your eye severely, so consider the following list and compare it to your daily life to see whether or not you could be taking better care of yourself

Eye Care: UV Rays

UV Rays are a dangerous topic for color blind people as many find it near impossible to tell when they have been burnt, but beyond that UV rays can directly damage your eyes leading to many potential problems. It is not hard to over-expose your eyes and everyone should take care to remember your sunglasseswhen spending time outside.

Eye Care: Foreign Objects

Many people worldwide pursue hobbies and careers that require protective eye-ware. Whilst the eye socket is designed to protect against objects of a tennis ball size or larger, consider the amount of debris that your eyes are exposed to daily. Metal workers risk sparks, carpenters and hobbyists risk timber shavings, cleaners risk chemical exposure, and the list goes on. It only takes one spec of debris to do serious irreversible damage to your eyes, so always wear appropriate protective eyewear.

Eye Care: Chemicals

Nearly 10% of all injuries to eyes are a result of damage from chemicals. Chemicals can quickly burn the sensitive tissue in and around the eye and precaution must always be taken using any sort of chemical to avoid risking your vision. Not everything is dangerous so always read the packaging and follow the directions for safe use.

Eye Care: Computer & TV Screens

Staring at a computer or TV screen can damage your eyes… WRONG! This a common myth most likely propagated by anxious parents! There is no direct risk of permanent eye damage associated with spending long amounts of time in front of a screen however there is a reason why some people do feel affected. When concentrating on a screen we tend to blink less, which dries our eyes – the simple solution is to look away for a minute or two every 20 minutes and remember to blink!

This is actually very good policy. Get into a routine of standing up and stretching every 20-30 minutes. You’ll reduce eye fatigue, reduce headaches, and your spine will thank you for straightening it out and giving it a chance to undo bad posture. A minute or two every half hour is all your eyes and spine need for adequate rest, slot it into your day!

Eye Care: Infection & Contact Lenses

The most commonly known eye infection is conjunctivitis. There are great medicines to help beat this infection but do remember that it IS contagious and you should take care not to risk spreading it to your family, friends, and colleagues. Conjunctivitis is easily contracted through bacteria, chemicals, a virus, allergies, or an irritant in the eye and can be passed between people by any form of physical contact.

Another common source for eye infection is improperly handled contact lenses. We insert these little things directly onto our eye for extended periods of time, if they are not properly disinfected with the chemicals your optometrist provided then you risk infection every time you insert them.

Use this checklist to help prevent eye infections:

  • Always disinfect your contact lenses correctly
  • Never use your saliva as a lubricant for contact lenses
  • Don’t share makeup or eye drops
  • Don’t touch the end of a bottle of eye drops as germs can transfer from your hand to the bottl
  • Wash your hands regularly!

What do I do if I Suspect Something Is Wrong With My Eyes?

This can’t be said better than as found on the Colour-Blindness.com website under their own Eye Care Page:

An excellent rule  to follow when caring for your eyes is “when in doubt, check it out!” Some important things to remember for daily life are:

  • If you have taken a hit to the eye and experience any changes in your vision, bleeding or the eye looks strange – go immediately to a hospital emergency ward to be checked out.
  • If you have constant red eyes, lasting pain in your eye, or any change to your visual acuity, head to an optometrist for a check-up and solution.
  • Always resist the urge to rub your eye if you get any particle of foreign matter in it. You should flush your eye with warm water, if this does not clear your eye – then once again, it’s off to the optometrist!

Don’t mess with your vision, losing your vision to carelessness or lacklustre care when your eye may be injured is just not worth the risk.

 

Colour Blindness Correction:

Whilst the condition remains incurable, there are a handful of companies that make shaded contact lenses & glasses lenses that they claim can aid a person in correcting their color blindness. Generally only one eye receives a shaded lens. That eye will then see colors differently and allow the brain to cross reference the input from each eye to discern colors it would not normally be able to. For more information try these websites.

  • www.colormax.org
  • www.color-view.com
  • www.colorlite.de/EN/Home-EN.html

A fourth company, ChromaGen claim that 97% of test subjects reported significant improvement to their color perception when using the ChromaGen lenses. However, many of these subjects disliked the lenses at first as the colored lenses do change the way the world is seen. All four companies promote their product as being able to make colors brighter and clearer, enhance color perception, and give the ability to new discern colors/shades.

Interestingly, critics have raised concerns over claims that these lenses only aid a person in passing the Ishihara color test, but offer no benefit when taking other tests such as the color arrangement test. Sources for this evidence are unavailable, so if you’re interested in the possibility of corrected color vision, there’s only one way to find out if it is right for you!

Living With Color Blindness

Living with color blindness is where education on the disease becomes important. As a condition of varying intensity between different people, color blindness most commonly ranges from so mild that you might not ever know you have it through to a severe enough state to make daily life both frustrating and dangerous. If you or someone you know is color blind, consider the following points and relate them to your daily life. These are just examples, so use them to get you thinking about what you can do to make daily life safer and less frustrating for yourself and others.

Driving With Color Blindness

One of the most common (and dangerous) risks for someone with moderate to severe red-green colorblindness or total color blindness is the inability to tell which color light is in effect. A simple solution is to ensure you always take time to identify where on the ‘light tree’ the lit bulb is. For example, in Australia the red Stop light is always at the top. Insurance claim statistics show that color blind people are strongly represented amongst crash victims.

Cooking with Color Blindness

Cooking is most often a matter of embarrassment and frustration. It can be quite hard to know when a steak is correctly cooked, whether the muffins are ready to come out, or even whether you’re using ripe produce. The last of which, using un-ripened produce, raises a serious side to cooking with color blindness. Some fruit and vegetables can be harmful until ripe, causing side-effects such as stomach aches.

While it might be best to just stay out of the kitchen, this isn’t always possible and it falls to family / flatmates to take the time to offer assistance when you cook. This topic very strongly highlights why everyone should be educated on color blindness. An aware family member can greatly ease the frustration of color blindness through some simple help such as ‘yep that steak is done’.

Schooling with Color Blindness

Color blindness can highlight itself in embarrassing fashion for a child during their early schooling. All through primary school, children are asked to choose colors as part of an exercise or lesson. Starting with coloring in pictures, through to rendering geographical maps correctly. It can be embarrassing for a child that colors their water in purple instead of blue, they may suffer from teasing by their peers, but may also suffer if the teacher does not understand why this is happening.

Teachers with no awareness of the condition may suspect the child of slow development and raise unnecessary concerns with the school and parents. Early diagnosis is important, but educating the educators is equally as important.

Career Limitations with Color Blindness

There are some industries that color blind people simply cannot partake in due to the associated dangers and risks should they misinterpret a particular color. These include the Air force, where a mistake could prove fatal, to geology where misinformation could ruin an entire survey, and even to electrical work. In times gone by electricians could not be color blind at all, but in many countries there is increasing lee-way in the industry allowing color blind people to participate if they wish.

Other careers such as in the Design industry require a strong sense of color coordination and can be very challenging for color blind people. There are no dangers associated with these industries so the choice to pursue a career in design is up to the individual.

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