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Color blindness, also known as color vision deficiency, affects an individual’s ability to perceive colors normally. This condition often manifests as difficulty distinguishing between specific colors, most commonly between greens and reds, and sometimes blues. While many people are born with this trait, you can develop deficiencies from disease later in life, too. Most often this is expressed with difficulty distinguishing between green and red but difficulty distinguishing between blue and yellow is also a possibility. It’s also worth noting that many patients have deficiencies and do not have complete color blindness.

The retina contains two types of photoreceptor cells: rods and cones. Rods are responsible for detecting light and dark, functioning best in low light conditions, while cones are crucial for color perception and are concentrated in the center of our vision. Humans have three types of cones that correspond to red, green, and blue light. The brain interprets signals from these cones to form our color perception.

Color blindness is primarily a congenital condition, typically inherited from a mother to her son. It often arises from a deficiency in cone cells in the retina. Men are significantly more likely to be color blind than women, with approximately one in ten males experiencing some form of color deficiency.

Certain conditions can elevate your risk for developing acquired color deficiency, including:

• glaucoma
• diabetes
• macular degeneration
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Parkinson’s disease
• chronic alcoholism
• leukemia
• sickle cell anemia