How Do You Become Colour Blind?

Colour blindness is usually an inherited defect. This means that you are born colour blind because either one or both of your parents are 'carriers' of the colour blind gene and have passed it down to you. Women can be carriers of the gene but need not necessarily be colour blind. On the other hand if a man is a carrier of the gene then he is compulsorily colour blind. This is why there are a substantially higher number of men that are colour blind than there are women.

Although a majority of colour blind people are that way because of they have inherited the colour blind gene, this is not the only way one can become colour blind. Rarely one can become colour blind due to considerable damage to one's optic nerve, retina or higher brain areas.

Colour blindness is basically a malfunctioning of the retina of the eye, which is responsible for the conversion of light energy into electrical energy, which is thereafter transferred to the brain in the form of signals. The conversion is carried out by two types of photoreceptor cells within the retina: cones, and rods. Disturbances or disorders in colour perception will occur when the amount of pigment present per cone is reduced, or absent.
At times, it is possible that a person may acquire colour blindness due to some rare disorder or disease, but more often than not, colour blindness is an inherited condition, which is passed on from a parent to a child.
The gene for colour blindness is carried in the X chromosomes, and it can occur more often in a male than in a female, although it is a fact that the chances of a female being a carrier of colour blindness are more than a male being a carrier.

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