What are the Three Types of Colour Blindness?

Booking an eye appointment and taking care of your overall eye health is extremely important. Not only will this ensure your eyes aren’t straining during everyday activities, but an optometrist can pick up certain eye defects including colour blindness. Colour blindness is thought to affect around 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women in the world, with approximately 3 million colour blind people living in the UK. Here is some information about the types of colour blindness.

What is Colour Blindness?

For normal colour vision to occur, all three types of cone cells in the eye must be functioning correctly. People with normal vision are called trichromats. Colour blindness is caused when one or more of the cone cells perceives light slightly out of alignment. People with this condition are known as anomalous trichromats and there are different anomalous conditions depending on which cone or how many cones are faulty. The most common types of colour blindness are:

Red-Green Colour Blindness

Deuteranomaly is the most common type of red-green colour blindness, in which green appears more like red. With protanomaly, the opposite is true. Certain shades of red look more green and less bright. Protanopia is the more severe form of red-green colour blindness and occurs when the L-cones are missing completely. Without these important cones, patients struggle to tell the difference between green and red at all, making tasks such as driving more difficult. Booking an ‘eye check near me’ is the best way to assess your eye health and confirm such issues.

Blue-Yellow Colour Blindness

Blue-yellow colour blindness is much less common than red-green colour blindness, but it can still happen. Tritanomaly is the type of colour blindness that makes it difficult to tell the difference between blue and green and between yellow and red. Tritanopia, on the other hand, makes someone unable to tell the difference between blue and green, purple and red and yellow and pink. Colours can also come across dull instead of bright. Typically, people with tritanopia are missing S cones. These are the cones that are sensitive to short waves.

Monochromatic Colour Blindness

With most types of colour blindness, patients can see some degree of colour. With monochromatic colour blindness, however, people see no colour at all and their world consists of different shades of grey ranging from black to white. It’s a bit like watching an old movie on a retro television set and can make life challenging. Thankfully, monochromatic colour blindness is extremely rare, occurring in around 1 in 33,000 patients.

Treatments for Colour Blindness

There are ways to correct certain colour blind conditions. For red-green colour blindness, for instance, tinted lenses or filters that go over your glasses can help people to see red and greens more clearly. Colour correction filters can also be useful for blue-green colour blindness.

For one of the best eye tests in London, contact The Eye Establishment. We conduct an assessment of your eyes that includes colour blindness checks and overall eye health.