Is Color Blindness Curable?

6/30/2016 Zaga 0 Comments

Yesterday, I bought 2 toothbrushes for me and my brother and then I said
“I get the red one, you get the blue one.”
he said “bruh, that’s purple.”
and I was like “lol, whatever”
 
Sometime, I forgot that I can’t see some colors like purple, brown, etc. Color Blindness affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women. The condition ranges from a variety of classes, red-green color blindness being the most common. Actually for me color blindness is not that big deal since I’m used to it and doesn’t affect much on my life anyway. But it reminds me to a viral video where two brothers overwhelmed after seeing true colors for the first time 
 
 
 
Jimmy and Jace Papenhausen reaction to true colors. Such a beautiful moment, I hope I can have that moment someday. I looked into enchroma website and the glasses range from 300$ until 500$. Craazy, I can’t afford it at the moment, someday though. But I’m asking the real question here. Is it possible? can you cure colorblind with some glasses? for now, I doubt it.
Let me explain, colorblind people able to see most basic colors like red, green, and blue. but if you start asking me what shade of blue? purple? sorry I can’t tell the difference between blue and purple. And this case is different to every colorblind person. That means when I can’t see purple some another colorblind guy could see purple but he can’t see pink meanwhile I can see pink but I can’t see purple. Confused? I will explain more.
 
Let’s say normal human able to see 10 million colors. From 10 million colors I can only see 6 million (this is just an example). And then another colorblind guy could see 7 million and the other guy is even worse, he can only see 5 million colors. Every colorblind have different cases on what color they can see and what color they can’t. and this is why colorblind is really hard to cure.
 
What about that guy on the video? Enchroma glasses helped them to see more colors. Let’s say it helped them to see more 1 or 2 million colors. It boosts the saturation of red and green light. But I doubt if it’s possible to see like a normal person with 10 million colors.
As written in enchroma website, “*Results may vary.” some people might see more 2 or 3 million colors and some people might don’t see the difference at all. And that’s why the glasses can be returned within 30 days if it does not help your color vision.
 
TL;DR:
Perfectly curing color blindness is currently impossible at the moment, but we are making proggress. Based on Enchroma effectiveness studies it helped 80% of cases of color blindness. Note that Enchroma glasses are usually effective for red-green color blindness and are unlikely to help for tritanomaly or tritanopia (blue-yellow color blindness). Maybe someday we will finally achieve 100% who knows?
Left: A landscape seen by someone with colorblindness. Right: The same landscape seen by a colorblind person wearing EnChroma glasses.
 
I hope someday I can get that glasses and see the difference between blue and purple.
 

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