For most of human history, the eye color you were born with was the color you were stuck with forever. Now, for the first time ever, science has given us a way to change that — and we’re not talking about colored contact lenses either.
California-based company Stroma Medical has reportedly developed a new technique that uses lasers to permanently alter the color of your eyes. Due to the nature of the procedure, Stroma is only able to change brown eyes to blue (and not the other way around), but the treatment is completely non-invasive, and can apparently be performed in under a minute.
So how exactly does it work? Stroma’s chairman Dr. Gregg Homer explains it best. “The fundamental principle is that under every brown eye is a blue eye,” he told CNN. “The only difference between a brown eye and a blue eye is this very thin layer of pigment on the surface. If you take that pigment away, then the light can enter the stroma—the little fibers that look like bicycle spokes in a light eye—and when the light scatters it only reflects back the shortest wavelengths and that’s the blue end of the spectrum.”
The procedure only takes about 20 seconds, but results won’t become apparent until several weeks after, when the body has had ample time to remove the dead pigment layer. After that, you’ll have baby blues for the rest of your days — no contact lenses required.
Stroma Medical hasn’t been given the greenlight to offer the procedure here in the States, but has already perfomed it on a number of patients living in Mexico and Costa Rica. It doesn’t come cheap though — treatments have reportedly been going for about £3,300, which roughly equates to $5,000 American.
Would you get it done?
