Table of contents:
- Can color blindness be cured?
- Color blind glasses, are they effective?
- 1. EnChroma color blind glasses
- 2. Glasses Color Correction System (CCS)
- Another way to deal with color blindness
- The potential for future treatment of color blindness
The most common case of color blindness is partial color blindness. This visual disturbance causes the eye to be unable to detect certain colors properly. The colors that are difficult to identify are red, blue, and green. However, is there a way to cure color blindness? Treatment for color blindness at this time is with special monocle glasses, but is it true that it can completely make the eyes distinguish colors?
Can color blindness be cured?
Partial color blindness in red and green is the most common, followed by blue and yellow color blindness.
This visual disturbance occurs due to limitation or loss of function of the cone cells in the retina, which is located at the back of the eye. These cones have photopigments that are useful for distinguishing colors. If the color photopigments for red, green, and blue don't work, you will have a hard time distinguishing between the colors that fall into the spectrum of these colors.
In some people, all the photopigments in the cone cell can become completely defunct and can only see black, white, and gray. This condition occurs in people with total color blindness, but cases of total color blindness are very rare.
Reporting from the National Eye Institute website, while there is no way or therapy that can cure color blindness. The reason is, color blindness is generally caused by genetic or hereditary factors.
As for cases of color blindness caused by diseases that attack the eye, it can still be treated by curing the disease that caused it.
For mild conditions, color blindness is not really a bother. Color blind people can still adapt to their conditions for normal activities. Currently, one way that can be done to treat color blindness at this time is through eyeglass therapy with special lenses.
Color blind glasses, are they effective?
Currently available color blind glasses are for those of you who have partial color blindness in red and green.
However, color blind glasses therapy is not a way that can cure color blindness completely. These vision aids only help improve the eye's ability to see colors in the red and green spectrum more accurately. However, color blind glasses are not sure to make the eye really able to distinguish the colors.
There are two types of glasses with special lenses to treat color blindness, namely:
1. EnChroma color blind glasses
A person who is color blind has photopigment damage in the cone cells. As a result, there is a buildup of light waves so that colors cannot be clearly identified.
EnChroma glasses are equipped with a special lens material that can reduce the overlap of light waves. That way, users can distinguish colors better.
This eyeglass therapy is known to improve color vision in 2 out of 10 people with color blindness. Further research is still needed to improve the function of the lenses in color blind glasses so that they can more effectively improve the eye's ability to detect color.
2. Glasses Color Correction System (CCS)
Another type of color blind glasses is the Color Correction System (CSS) glasses developed by dr. Thomas Azman.
These glasses are equipped with special filters that can change the wavelength of light of each color that is captured by the eye. As a result, people with color blindness can perceive colors more strongly and improve the eye's ability to distinguish colors.
CCS glasses can be specially designed to meet the needs of each person with color blindness. Apart from that, the filters on these CSS glasses can also be used on contact lenses.
This method also cannot treat color blindness completely. Even if you still can't distinguish colors as well as normal people's eyes, red and green color vision will get better when using it.
So, to find out which type of glasses is right for you, you should consult your doctor. The use of glasses with special lenses is not necessarily effective for every color blind sufferer. The reason is, this is also influenced by how severe the damage is to the cone cells in the retina.
Another way to deal with color blindness
The best way to deal with color blindness is to adapt when carrying out daily activities.
Those of you who have difficulty distinguishing these colors also need to adjust the lighting in the house. Instead of using lights that sometimes make you glare, it's better to open the window blinds so that sunlight will illuminate the room.
This natural light from sunlight can help emphasize colors so that people with color blindness can recognize colors better.
In addition, people with color blindness also need to practice recognizing color differences by memorizing or marking certain objects. Those of you who often drive should remember the order of the traffic lights.
Meanwhile, when you have to use items at home according to their color, you can attach a label that says the actual color of the item. Get help from family or friends who have normal vision to distinguish one color from another.
Finally, also consult eye health conditions regularly to an ophthalmologist.
The potential for future treatment of color blindness
Gene therapy is one way or medical therapy that has the opportunity to cure color blindness. However, currently the development of a method of treating color blindness through gene therapy is still in the early stages of research and experiments are still being carried out on animals.
However, several trials have produced such good results that research into gene therapy as a way to cure color blindness in humans has begun.