Eye-mazing: Halloween Safety and Eye Color Change

Jeepers, creepers! Would you like to make your brown eyes blue? We can change our mind, and we can change the color our hair. Can we change the color of our eyes? Kelly Mitchell, M.D., is a well-known expert to our listeners. He's an ophthalmologist with Texas Tech Physicians. Dr. Mitchell explains how we get our eye color and the purpose behind the color on our iris. He also goes over the different procedures currently for changing the color of our eyes, including colored contact lenses, and reminds us to keep our eyes safe while we’re celebrating Halloween.  

Transcript

Melissa Whitfield  

00:09

Hello and welcome back to Texas Tech Health Check from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. I'm your host, Melissa Whitfield. We want you to get healthy and stay healthy with help from evidence-based advice from our physicians, health care providers and researchers. It's the time of year when some of us start thinking about our Halloween costumes, or perhaps you've been working on your get-up for some time now. Maybe you're changing the color of your hair, but what about your eyes? Dr. Kelly Mitchell is an ophthalmologist with Texas Tech Physicians, and he explains how we get our eye color and the purpose behind the color on of iris. Dr. Mitchell also goes over the different procedures currently for changing the color of our eyes and reminds us to keep our eyes safe while we're celebrating Halloween. Dr Mitchell, welcome back to our podcast.

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

01:11

Thanks for having me.

Melissa Whitfield  

01:12

Can you remind our listeners a little bit about what you do here at the Health Science Center?

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

01:17

Sure. I've been at Texas Tech for over 20 years. And I'm one of the eye surgeons here, what we call an ophthalmologist; and my area of interest and expertise is the diseases of the retina, specifically macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and I also spend time in dealing with some of our more severe ocular trauma cases. Well,

Melissa Whitfield 

01:41

We're happy to have you on especially answering some of these Halloween themed sort of questions about our eyes. So I guess first of all, what determines our eye color when we're born, and can the color of our iris change as babies grow?

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

01:55

Sure. The determination of the eye color is really what we would determine, the iris muscle thickness. And so babies that are born with brown eyes are already born with, let's say, fairly muscular irises, and they will stay brown. Babies that are born with blue eyes, or, let's say, hazel eyes, sometimes those babies haven't developed the full muscular layer of their iris; and those are the babies that sometimes, despite the hope of the parents and family that they keep their blue or hazel eyes, they may slowly slip into those more muscular brown eyes.

Melissa Whitfield  

02:41

We can change the color of our hair and our skin, sometimes. Can we change the color of our eyes? And is it safe? 

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

02:47

The answer is yes. We can change the color of our irises. Is it safe? The answer is probably also pretty clearly not really, because of the fact that to really do that, they have to do a surgical procedure, which probably most ophthalmologists feels like it changes how that part of the eye works. And I think we have to go back and say, Why is the iris there? And I think we think, Oh, it's there because it gives people different colors. We have blue eyed and brown eyed and hazel eyed people. That's not really why the iris is there. The Iris is used to to keep light out of the back of the eye when it's too bright, and that's why brown irises are more common in people of ethnicities that have that have heritages around the equator, where it's more bright and hot sun, and so it is hard to change the color of the iris. Now you can do a few things. For instance, less if we're not going to get inside the eye doing what I call an iris graft, or an iris transplant. Those I think most people would think is probably beyond common sense, really. But you could pigment the cornea, and you could say, for instance, let me give you an example. It's easier. If you take a blue eyed patient who says, I'd rather have brown eyes, and then they can have pigment placed in their cornea. The challenge with that is, is one that pigmentation will not expand or contract in light or dark environments, and so that would make it harder for that person to see in dim, dimly lit environments, because normally your pupil gets bigger, and then the pigmentation in your iris would not get bigger, and that would be like wearing sunglasses at night. And then also, too the pigmentation can sometimes put you at risk for having some corneal scarring that could make the eye irritated. 

Melissa Whitfield  

04:55

Also, could you go over a little bit more about Iris implant surgery and what. Potential complications? 

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

05:01

Sure. There are indications for Iris implant surgery that are very reasonable and very justified, and in the realm that I spoke of earlier, severe ocular trauma or a child that is born with an iris defect, those are exactly the type of patients where sewing an iris transplant into the eye makes perfect sense. Now again, that Iris doesn't function like the normal iris because it doesn't have innervation. It's not it's not activated by the nerves, but what it does do is it does provide that shield so that the patient does not have unnecessary glare.

Melissa Whitfield  

05:48

So as I mentioned earlier, Halloween is coming up. Are colored contact lens a safe alternative to changing our eye color, and how can we make sure that we don't cause any damage if we wear them, even if it's just for that occasion?

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

06:00

So eye injuries around Halloween. If you look at United States, we're a country that loves holidays, Halloween, certainly one of them. Probably throughout the United States, if we look at the eye injury database, there's probably nearly 500 eye injuries related to Halloween that occur across America. If you think of Texas as one of the bigger states, probably then we have some proportion of those larger than other states, and certainly the contact lenses, which I'll get to in a minute. Cause some but there's some other things that we need to worry about. I'd like to touch on. First, the costumes, where the young kiddos have thematically, let's say, a sword or some type of weapon. Mostly, our boys sometimes get a little exuberant and they accidentally hit somebody or themselves in the face or the eye with their prop. Also, masks sometimes do not fit appropriately, and the edge of the mask can rub on the eye. There's also, I think, a lot of makeup use, and the makeup, it generally probably isn't the same quality of makeup that, let's say, our moms and aunts and grandmothers get, so that may be at a higher risk for some contamination. There is a desire of sometimes people putting little trinkets on their conjunctiva, which is the white part of their eye, with glue. And that probably is not a good thing to do either, because that causes irritation. But the contact lenses, I think, have become a big thing, probably because, also with Halloween costumes, you know, we're very comfortable putting in fake teeth, whether they're fangs, if we're going to be a going to be a vampire, or, let's say, some crooked teeth, if we're going to be a zombie. And we tend to do pretty well because our mouth is more durable and our teeth are tougher, but cosmetic contact lenses that are not fit by an optometrist or an ophthalmologist really should not be put on your eye surface. You shouldn't just go to a Halloween party store and buy a contact lens set that makes you look like a cat or a Martian. I don't have anything against cats, and I've never met a Martian. But I don't want you to have those contact lenses in your eye, because they're just not fit for your eye. And you could have an abrasion which could lead to an infection. And there have been many cases in which people started with their cosmetic Halloween theme contact lenses, and they end up with such a severe infection that they lose all of the vision out of that eye.

Melissa Whitfield  

08:45

What about sharing lenses?

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

08:48

That's also an easy answer, and that's no.

Melissa Whitfield  

08:51

Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

08:53

I would just add. We certainly, as an ophthalmologist who's had children and enjoyed Halloweening with our children, we want you to enjoy Halloween. Let's just do it safe, and do it by keeping your eyes healthy so you can see all that candy that you bring home.

Melissa Whitfield  

09:09

Well, thank you so much for all this great information and for giving us a lesson on you know, the purposes of the parts of our eyes. So thank you.

Kelly Mitchell, M.D.

09:17

You're welcome. Thanks for having me

Melissa Whitfield  

09:20

Thank you for listening to Texas Tech Health Check. Make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you listen to podcasts. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek immediate medical advice from your physician or your health care provider for questions regarding your health or medical condition. Texas Tech Health Check is brought to you by Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and produced by T.R. Castillo, Suzanna Cisneros, Mark Hendricks, Kay Williams, Hope Caperton and me, Melissa Whitfield.