Color blindness or color blindness is a genetic disorder where the person cannot perceive colors normally, specifically greens and reds. This term is attributed to the one who identified this condition, the chemist John Dalton. The level of affectation of this alteration can vary between the ability to distinguish any color and a slight difficulty to differentiate the red and green shades.
This vision defect is hereditary and is usually suffered by men, although it is transmitted by women. Since from a genetic perspective, color blindness is linked to the X chromosome. This means that women carry the disease, even when they do not suffer from it.
In order to understand a little more about this visual effect, we must first know how the process of perceiving objects through the retina is: in the retina there are two classes of cells that perceive light: rods and cones. Rods have the ability to detect light and dark, while cones detect color, concentrating on the center of your vision. There are three types of cones: those that detect the color red, green and blue. The brain uses all the information it receives from these colored cone cells to be able to fix the perception of color.
Color blindness occurs when: one or more of these colored cone cells are missing; either they do not work in the correct way, or they perceive a different color than normal. When color blindness is severe, it is because the three cones do not exist.
In order to determine whether or not you have color blindness, you should be aware of the following symptoms: when you have problems perceiving colors and their brightness in a normal way. Impossibility to establish differences between shades of the same color or similar colors.
Often these symptoms are so mild that it is difficult to determine whether or not you suffer from colorblindness. The ophthalmologist is the one who through an eye exam could tell whether or not he suffers from this defect.
Regarding treatment, there is not one as such, it is only recommended to use special glasses that help the person to distinguish between similar colors.
