Changes in eye color can be as captivating as they areconcerning. By understanding what can cause eye colors to change, you can determine if what you’re experiencing is typical or if you should see a visionary eye doctor.
Here is a look at common causes of eye color changes.
Natural Age-Related Eye Color Changes
One of the most common situations that leads to changes in eye color occurs in children. When a baby is born, their eyes are usually lighter or bluer. Mainly, this is because a newborn hasn’t had sun exposure, so the melanin in their eyes isn’t fully developed. As they are exposed to light, melanin production increases, causing the color of their eyes to shift.
However, eye color changes can also occur as a person ages. Those with lightercoloreyes – especially Caucasians – may see their eyes lighten over time. The pigmentslowdegrades over time, resulting in less color.
Since melanin plays a role in eye color, exposure to the sun can lead to eye color changes. Usually, it requires prolonged exposure and results in the irises darkening.
Medical Treatments
Some medications may alter eye color. One prime example was a name-brand eyelash growth serum that was available by prescription. While the side effect was rare and usually required the drops to be applied to the eye – not the lash line, as it was meant to be used – a chemical in the serum could have the ability to impact eye pigments.
It’s also possible for other medications and surgeries to result in eye color changes. If that’s a potential side effect of a treatment, your eye care specialist will discuss it in advance.
Nearby Colors
In some cases, it may look like your eye color has changed when, in reality, youreyes are the same color. Changes to the size of your pupils can cause your eye color to appear slightly different. Partially, this is because your limbal ring (the darker ring on the outside of the iris) is closer to the pupil’s edge. This can make your eye color appear darker because less of the iris is visible.
Additionally, other colors near your eyes may impact how your eye color is perceived. For example, your clothing, makeup, hair, and glasses frame color may all influence the apparent hue of your irises. However, most of that is an illusion.
When a different color is near your eye, slight reflections of those shades might make your eye color seem different, even though it isn’t. In a similar vein, changing the colors that are near your eyes may createmore or less contrastthan is usually there, making the hue seem stronger or weaker due to an adjustment in the comparison.
Similarly, crying, allergies, or other activities that cause the sclera – the white part of the eye – to redden may make the irises seem slightly different. Again, this is because the area near the iris changed hues, not because the iris itself is a new color.
Medical Conditions
There are medical conditions that can lead to shifts in eye color. Heterochromia – a condition that causes a person to have two different colored irises or more than one color in a single iris – may result in color changes. Horner’s syndrome may cause the eyes to lighten. Pigmentary glaucoma and Fuch’sheterochromicuveitis – an inflammatory condition – may also result in changes to the iris. The same goes for eye melanoma, a type of cancer.
Consult a Reputable Eye Doctor
The eye care specialists in Buffalo, NY at ECVA take the safety and health of our patients’ eyes seriously. If you have concerns about your eye health or simply haven’t had an eye exam in a while, we can help.Schedule an appointmentat your closest ECVA clinic today.
"The factors that can cause eyes to change colors—or appear to have different colors—include genes, diseases, medications and trauma," said Omar Chaudhary, MD, an ophthalmologist in Potomac, Md.
As they are exposed to light, melanin production increases, causing the color of their eyes to shift. However, eye color changes can also occur as a person ages. Those with lighter color eyes – especially Caucasians – may see their eyes lighten over time. The pigment slow degrades over time, resulting in less color.
There is a possibility of minor changes in eye color as an adult. For example, long-term sun exposure may cause your eyes to darken slightly, while a small percentage of Caucasian people's eyes lighten as they age.
Your mood and your body's natural reaction isn't actually changing the color of your eyes. This situation is more of a mental mind trick. The effect can still be very interesting. The size of your pupil can also be changed due to stroke, brain damage, or trauma according to the AAO.
Genes with reported roles in eye color include ASIP, IRF4, SLC24A4, SLC24A5, SLC45A2, TPCN2, TYR, and TYRP1. The effects of these genes likely combine with those of OCA2 and HERC2 to produce a continuum of eye colors in different people.
Heterochromia is when your eyes are different colors. Each eye may be a different color, or there may be color variations within the same eye. It's often due to a harmless genetic mutation. Other causes include congenital and acquired conditions, eye injury and some eye drops.
Horner's syndrome can also cause a change in eye color due to depigmentation of the iris. Injury or trauma to the eye can damage the iris, causing tissue loss. This tissue loss can make the eye color look different. A dilated pupil can make the color of that eye look different from the other eye.
Of those four, green is the rarest. It shows up in about 9% of Americans but only 2% of the world's population. Hazel/amber is the next rarest color after green. Blue is the second most common and brown tops the list, found in 45% of the U.S. population and possibly almost 80% worldwide.
If the color of one or both eyes changes suddenly and significantly, see an eye doctor as soon as possible. It is particularly dangerous for eyes to change from brown to green, or from blue to brown. Major changes in the iris' pigment can indicate illness, such as: Horner's syndrome.
In most people, the answer is no. Eye color fully matures in infancy and remains the same for life. But in a small percentage of adults, eye color can naturally become either noticeably darker or lighter with age.
One thing these survey results have in common is that light-colored eyes — green, gray, blue, and hazel — are named as the most attractive eye colors in the world. In one large survey of more than 66,000 people, green was chosen as the most attractive eye color. Green is also among the rarest eye colors.
Very rarely a colour change may be observed – most commonly involving those with blue eyes having them turn from blue to brown, but the eyes can also blacken (anecdotally described as more common in dysphoric manic/hypomanic states but also observed by the first author in several patients when they developed a mixed ...
One of the most well-known factors is exposure to sunlight. Sunlight can cause the melanin in our irises to darken, leading to changes in eye color over time. Other factors that may influence eye color include diet and nutrition, stress, and illness.
The pupils of those with PTSD failed to show sharp constriction caused by light changes, and more enlargement when exposed to emotional stimuli that other participants.
A child's eye color depends on the pairing of genes passed on from each parent, which is thought to involve at least three gene pairs. The two main gene pairs geneticists have focused on are EYCL1 (also called the gey gene) and EYCL3 (also called the bey2 gene).
This is a persistent myth with no scientific basis. Blue eyes are a result of genetics, not inbreeding. The diversity of eye colors within a population is a natural outcome of genetic variation. Blue eyes are not a mutation but rather a variation in the expression of genes related to eye color.
The most common eye color is brown. More than half of the world's population has brown eyes (some experts include amber as a shade of brown, too). A key reason is the range of shades that fall under this color. Brown eyes can range from light to dark.
Heterochromia is the presence of different colored eyes in the same person. Heterochromia in humans appears either as a hereditary trait unassociated with other disease, as a symptom of various syndromes or as the result of a trauma.
Although the deep blue eyes of some people such as Elizabeth Taylor can appear purple or violet at certain times, "true" violet-colored eyes occur only due to albinism. Eyes that appear red or violet under certain conditions due to albinism are less than 1 percent of the world's population.
While your eye color is determined, in part, by your genes, the amount of melanin in your eye's iris (the colorful part of the eye) is what determines your exact color. Everyone has a brown pigment in the iris called melanin, but in different amounts and with different distributions in the eye.
And while actual changes in eye color are rare, they can also indicate an underlying health disorder that needs to be addressed. “Eyes can appear to change color due to an undiagnosed disease, a new medication or even trauma,” says David Silverstone, M.D., a professor of ophthalmology at the Yale School of Medicine.
Sometimes, a change in eye color is just a simple part of aging and is harmless. However, there are a few things that can permanently change melanin levels. Ocular diseases, such as pigmentary glaucoma, can change melanin levels. Genetics could also cause eye color to change over time.
Introduction: My name is Dr. Pierre Goyette, I am a enchanting, powerful, jolly, rich, graceful, colorful, zany person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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