No surprises
Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 12:42PM I forgot! In my list of random things to tell you about, I meant to include that Nathan and I recently sent our dna samples to 23andMe, one of those ancestry services where you send them your spit and they tell you about your ancestral background and various health things.
I'd seen some chatter about the services and was curious. Being adopted, I have a definite lack of family medical history. (Backstory...I was born in South Korea somewhere, was found on some steps of a government building around age 6 months (???), went to an orphanage and foster care, and was adopted around age 11 months. Officially, I lack a birth certificate or a specific birth place...so obviously have no information about much of anything, lol.)
Anyhow, as I was saying...curious. So, when I saw during Amazon's Prime Day this summer that the kits were half off, I went ahead and grabbed a couple kits. We got them in the mail, did our part (spitting in the provided tubes) and sent everything back in. Then, we waited.
And now we have our results! (Mine came back pretty quick...Nathan's took another couple weeks. We figure this is because parts of their process involve comparing your results to similar results...and 23andMe has a lot more data from people who look like Nathan than people who look like me, lol.)
Drumroll please...
I'm Korean and Nathan's white. ;)
LOL. We'd thought that possibly there would be some surprise ancestor in there some place, but apparently we're both pretty straight-forward. Specifically...
My dna says 100% East Asian
- 73.4% Korean
- 11.1% Japanese
- 6.3% Chinese
- and "other" East Asian
...which all makes sense given the history of the area.
Nathan's says 99.6% European
- 43.5% British & Irish (I'm assuming this would include Scottish)
- 19.5% French & German
- 30.7% broadly Northwestern European
- other miscellaneous European stuff
- and 0.4% Native American
...this all matches with the extensive genealogy that both sides of his family have done.
The reports are pretty interesting...they can gauge how long ago those various ancestries happened and all sorts of things. For instance, it says that the Korean part is the more recent and that the Japanese and Chinese parts, in keeping with the history of occupation and such, were from the 1700s and 1800s.
With the health portion of the kit (you can get a kit just for the ancestry part but we got the "upgraded" kits), we also found out that neither of us is carriers for the 42 things 23andMe tests for and neither of us has an increased risk for any of the four genetic health risks they test for. Plus, neither of us likely has red hair, neither of us are likely to have a widow's peak, I am more likely to have dry earwax (true) while Nathan is more likely to have wet earwax (also true), we're both likely to have detached earlobes (not true...mine are attached), and heaps of other strange things.
So. That's that. :)
I know that none of these results should be taken as medical advice and all that, but I feel better having at least *some* information and being able to give that to my sons.
(If you're at all interested in the service or have questions, please feel free to contact me. Plus, I have a referral link I can send you if you're thinking about buying the service.)
Reader Comments (1)
This is wonderful news for you! Especially knowing about the health factors. Understanding that your children are healthy and probably not facing illnesses (most likely) is great news for you. I'm so glad you had it checked. I have been wondering for years how you would know if your children had chances for diseases in their future or chances for health risks. Honestly, it worried me a little but I figured you probably thought about it just as much as I did, so there was no point in me saying anything. This is a huge relief. Congratulations Amanda. I love you.