What does color have to do with eyeglasses?

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Through the wonderful world of social media, I was commenting on a forum at iMatthews. There I had a conversation with a member about color, my speciality and vision which is his. He is Dr. Keshav Bhat of Austin Village Eyecare. He incorporated our chat and wrote this wonderful post about colorblindness. Here it is:

Donna Frasca and I recently had a conversation online about color (her area of interest) and vision (my area of expertise).

From a clinical perspective, we test color vision as some 10 million American men—fully 7 percent of the male population—either cannot distinguish red from green, or see red and green differently from most people. This is the commonest form of color confusion, mistakenly referred to as color 'blindness'. This condition affects only .4 percent of women. The fact that color blindness is so much more prevalent among men implies that, like hemophilia, it is carried on the X chromosome, of which men have only one copy.

[Mothers have an X-X pairing of chromosomes carrying genetic material, and fathers have an X-Y pairing of chromosomes. A mother and father each contribute chromosomes that determine the sex of their baby. When X chromosomes pair with another X, you are female. And when the X pairs with the Y, you are male.

If you have a common form of color blindness caused by an X-linked recessive gene, your mother must be a carrier of the gene or be color deficient herself.

Fathers with this inherited form of red-green color blindness pass the X-linked gene to their daughters but not to their sons, because a son cannot receive X-linked genetic material from his father.

A daughter who inherits the color-deficient gene from her father will be only a carrier unless her mother also has the color-deficient gene. If a daughter inherits the X-linked trait from both her father and her mother, then she will be color blind as well as a carrier.

Any time a mother passes along this X-linked trait to her son, he will inherit the color vision deficiency and have trouble distinguishing reds and greens. Again, a daughter can be a carrier but will have this form of color blindness herself only when both her father and mother pass along the X-linked gene. This is why more men than women are color blind.]

Back to the issue of how color is important from a 'retail' perspective:

Your skin tone is an important consideration when choosing the right frames.

Thank you Dr. Bhat for this very colorful and educational information.I think these graphics that you've provided will also help guide us in choosing the correct color frames for our skin tones. 

If your in the market for new eyeglasses you can make an appointment with Dr. Bhat and if you need color for your home, please contact me to schedule an appointment for a color consultation.