One in 10 men are colorblind, and some parents don't even know their kids see the world in different shades. Now, special glasses are helping one Tennessee kid reach for new heights.
Finding a path to the top is hard enough but for 11-year old Benjamin Drake picking the right hand hold when colors are confusing makes the task even harder.
"The green and red over there. I'm getting kinda mixed up but with the glasses," he said.
They're called Enchroma glasses and he said they've been a game-changer.
"I tell them that they work really, really good. Especially because of rock climbing. The colors," he said.
Benjamin's mom Tonia said for years she didn't know anything was off.
"For a long time, I didn't notice anything but after we realized it we started discussing colors and there's so many things that he sees that we have no idea. Like pinks and blues. And sometimes white looks pink or pink and grey," she said.
"It's a genetic defect most of the time carried by the mother, passed on to 50 percent of her sons," said
Christa Walling, an optometrist at Hancock Eye Associates.
"My boys for example, they are both colorblind as well and there was a red bud tree blooming when they were learning how to talk and they said, 'Oh mommy look at the blue trees.'" she said.
Walling said diagnosing patients early and getting these special glasses help color their world.
"[Enchroma] filter out very minor spectrums, where the colors are confused. And so when you separate them in about 3 or 4 different places, then the brain sees those as different and separate," she said.
For more information about Enchroma glasses click here.
