DNA Me: Results Are Back

3.1% Neanderthal and Proud!

Sitting patiently and waiting is not my best feature. I have been all prickly every time I read anything about DNA lately ever since I sent in the 23andMe sample back at the end of January. Sunday I received an email that the first wave of results were ready and popped immediately on over to see what was there. It was all of the health results.

Must say that it's smart of them to give you the health results first so you (meaning me) can review the information first. When I got the email I was excited and, frankly just between us, a bit scared. What if it did say something horrid? Now I'd pretty much thought this through and concluded that I'm a proactive person and would want fair warning about any predisposition to a medical condition and that I'd be thrilled at the chance to take some sort of action to give myself the best outcome, so I was super surprised to feel that tiny butterfly in my gut just before clicking through to log in.

Here's what I saw once I got past the log in screen.

 

 

See that blue area, Health Overview? That's where I went first. So now I know that I have a propensity for gallstones at 21.7% when the average is 14.3%. Asked Mom about this when we spoke today and she said that she did have trouble with gallstones and follows a low fat diet and I do too. Age related macular degenration and exfoliation glaucoma are higher than average as well, which I guessed because both Mom and Dad were diagnosed, so no news there.

 

But there was a line that really caught my attention, and that was on the Inherited Conditions page. It listed me as having a variant for Medium-Chain Acyl-CoA Dehydrogenase (MCAD) Deficiency. What's that you say? Here's the page with a full explanation. A person needs this variant from both parents before it's an issue and it seems that I have only have one variant. It says this about that:

 

Has one mutation in the ACADM gene linked to MCAD deficiency. A person with one of these mutations typically does not have MCAD deficiency, but can pass the mutation to offspring. May have other mutations in the ACADM gene (not reported here).

 

Here's the screen below with the linked page information which I must say was very informative!

 



Bottom line is that I've always had a problem maintaining my blood sugar for as long as I can remember with no obvious cause. It's puzzled me and it's kept my docs a tad mystified. If this connection bears out and I do have a variant not tested per se, then I might have the reason why and this is something I will be sharing with my health care practitioner.

Monday I check back and saw that my Ethnic and Ancestral Roots info was ready. And from there I clicked on over and get the break down of chromosomes. I saw that I'm 99.9% European and .1% Sub-Saharan African. Was hoping for something more interesting than that:) Oh, well, we are what we are.

 

 

 

 

Then I clicked the drop down menu in the middle top and see Ancestry By Country and this is very fascinating.

 



I find that I can mouse over each line on the score card on the right to get any further info about that grouping and watch as specific chromosomes for that population group get enhanced on the bar chart on the left. Very cool! But I'm surprised that there's not more British Isles and German components to the chromosomal mix. Hmmm. I see our work is not done, Mom, and we need to dig deeper into those tree branches.

There's so much more! Am super glad to be signed up for CeCe Moore's workshop locally at the Chula Vista Genealogical Society on March 30. Talk about timing!

This is the best $99 I've ever spent on genealogy, and possibly the most fun! Now Mom and Brother are going to do it, so tripple the fun:)

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/03/dna-me-results-are-back.html