23 and me kit

I recently ordered a "23 and me" kit. Should be arriving by today.

Who has had experience with this? Was it helpful?

Thanks.

Post Edited (Sunflower1920) : 12/30/2021 10:06:00 AM (GMT-7)

I wish there was a company that did these tests but anonymously.
For some reason I don't feel comfortable giving my DNA information away.
But I can see how much value there is in having the results.
Dilemma haha.

I agree sunflower, maybe I should give it a shot. Thank you.

I seriously highly doubt that anyone’s going to do anything with your DNA information. This is almost 2022 there’s so much information on any of us already. If you don’t have gifted genes, nobody’s going to clone you. And there are laws against health discrimination but if they wanted to find out anything they could just somehow access your electronic Health file that so many healthcare organizations share amongst themselves.

Your Social Security number alone could make you bankrupt in the hands of the wrong people. And that number is accessibly floating everywhere. I’d be more worried about that. O:

"Interestingly, Anne Wojcicki (the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe) is the ex-wife of Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) and sister of Susan Wojcicki -- CEO of YouTube and former Google employee."

Yes, the connections are unsettling. The following article expresses some concerns too that make me think twice about doing it again.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/01/china-is-trying-to-collect-americans-dna-and-more-fmr-us-intel-official-says/

Well, there’s always people with worse genetic data than you have.

It’s like hiking in grizzly country. If your with other people, make sure there’s someone who's a slower runner than you.

i have done 23 and me - and done the follow on analysis with self decode and MTFR / methylation genes

for me there was very little if anything actionable in the results - and like everything i do i spent a good deal of time trying to extract what value there was.

there are still some big issues with the technology

1, not every SNIP is tested - just a selection on whatever chip they are using at the time - these change over time so you cannot always get the information for the gene you are interested in from 23 and me - even in the raw data - they simply do not have it - this includes some of the methylation genes of most interest to many people

2, in most cases. for most SNIP the test can only tell you if you have the a mutation or not at a particular location - it does not tell you how well your version of the gene is working - it may be better or worse than the wild type or more common allele

3, there are further issues with interpretation of these genetic test results. one of the main ones is that the relative impacts of mutations in the genes you are born with - which is fixed - vs - the epigenetics that controls these genes are not well understood. These epigenetic factors that control what genes are active and how much are not fixed and are modified significantly, often dramatically by many many factors - such as diet, lifestyle, sleep, exercise, stress etc throughout your lifetime. it may well be that all but the most extreme genetic factors can be offset by lifestyle factors - in fact there is population level evidence to suggest that in most cases the epigenetic factors form more like 80% of disease risks and only around 20% is strictly down to the underlying genetics. put another way its doesn't really matter what it says in the instruction book - if the pages are not read.

its not super expensive ( the business model they use subsidises the price of the test because you allow them to sell your aggregated and anonymised data to 3rd parties ) so by all means have a go

but be prepared to do a deep dive and wrestle with the above issues