Imagine a world, where you cannot experience the extensive array of hues, your access to colour is limited. Likewise, colour blindness is a misnomer because people with this condition are neither blind nor are they not able to distinguish any colours. On the contrary, they have absolutely normal eyesight with the inability to perceive equally all the colours of the visible spectrum. This condition is more appropriately called Colour Vision deficiency (CVD).

 

Dr. Rohan Goyal, Director Sanjeevan Eye Institute

For people affected by Colour blindness, problems can arise in even the most simple of activitieslike buying vegetables, preparing food, gardening, playing a sport, driving a car, watching television and selecting clothing. So today, on World Colour Blindness Awareness day, we would like to discuss the ailment at large.

According to American Academy of Opthalmology, “Colour blindness occurs when you are unable to see colours in a normal way. Most commonly, colour blindness happens when someone cannot distinguish between certain colours, usually between greens and reds, and occasionally blues.”

The retina of the eye is made up of two kinds of cells, rods and cones. Rods detect only light and dark and are very sensitive to low light levels, therefore helping us to see objects at night. On the other hand, cone cells detect colour and are concentrated near the center of our vision. There are three types of cones that see colour: red, green and blue. The sensory nerves in the brain uses input from these three colour cone cells to determine our colour perception.

Colour blindness can occur when one or more of the colour cone cells are absent, nonfunctioning, or detect a different colour than normal. There are three kinds of colour blindness:

  1. Blue-Yellow Colour Blindness: It is rarer than red-green colour blindness caused due to complete absence or limited function of the blue-cone cell
  2. Red-Green Colour Blindness: The most common type of the vision ailment caused due to loss or limited function of red cone or green cone photopigments
  3. Complete Colour Blindness : People affected by this vision ailment do not experience colour at all

Colour Blindness is prevalent in males more than in females, nearly 1 in 8 men and 1 in 200 women in the world is affected by this vision ailment. The X Chromosomes present in the DNA structure of men carries this gene disorder. Most people affected by colour blindness are born with it; this could also be caused due to accident or a mishap. Researchers and clinicians are extensively working to formulate treatments and procedures to cure colour blindness.

The treatment procedures  are developed in such a way that they help the entire visual apparatus, viz., the lens, cone cells, ciliary muscles, retina and the optic nerve, to help it correct itself so as to treat the specific ailment and also improve visual acuity.

The absence of all appreciation of colours in these cases is very rare. Having found successful results in more than 750 cases of colour blindness since 2006, the techniques at Sanjeevan for Perfect Eyesight add up to a double learning process. This vision therapy helps you in identifying, matching, making and sorting colours. Vision therapy also comprises of relaxation techniques which help you in overall improvement of impaired vision and other severe problems in eyesight.

– The Author is Dr. Rohan Goyal, Director Sanjeevan Eye Institute

 

Source : https://health.cxotv.news/2017/09/11/mere-colourcan-speak-to-the-soul-in-a-thousand-different-ways-oscar-wilde/