 [ Symptoms ] i had unprotected sex with a woman and literally the day after i felt a dull pain on the tip of my penis it is not bad mostly irritating and makes me readjust all the time does not burn when i pee or anything and do not see any redness or topical issues i have been reading that you should wait a few months before getting tested for anything so i thought i would check here in the meantime any ideas can i rule out anything in my mind [ Disease ] red orange yellow green blue purple look around and pay attention to the color you see is it bright and vivid better or worse than yesterday now think about how well you slept last night or the night before could it be that your ability to see colors depends on a good night is sleep now this is fascinating stuff research just emerging and presented at the 24th annual meeting of the associated professional sleep societies apss earlier this month suggests that sleep literally colors your view of the world put simply sleep restores your ability to see and process colors correctly the technicality of how this all works and how the researchers went about figuring this out is pretty complex but suffice it to say that color perception — whether or not you see gray or green for instance shifts while you are awake thus distorting what color you are really seeing and overnight sleep brings your color recognition back in line with what is really there so when you “see” gray you can be sure it is in fact gray and not green according to the authors scientists had not previously investigated how sleep might affect the way we “see” the world around us but i will point out that other recent research has discovered that our ability to recognize and remember faces is indeed influenced by the amount of sleep we get these two abilities distinguishing color and faces are not so different when you consider the science behind sleep and our memory banks sleep has a profound effect on our memories it is well documented for example that sleep plays a big role in helping us to * remember things * learn new information * process data efficiently * consolidate memories in fact it is believed that dreams may play a special role in that consolidation though we do not know exactly how that all works yet  and of course we need to have sharp memories in order to recall colors and different faces — relationships that we learn just as you learn to know that red is red and green is green you also learn which faces belong to your best friend first grade teacher and mother what i love about this latest study is that it examines an aspect of life so prized by humans being able to see a spectrum of color this skill has enhanced human interactions for millennia helpful to not just social interactions but in some cases survival granted some people who are truly color blind do not have trouble getting through life but if given the opportunity i think most people would prefer to see all the colors of the rainbow clearly even if seeing color does not always equate with survival it sure makes life more exciting and in a word vivid so the next time you can not distinguish blue from green so well and you are bickering with a significant other over whether or not