What's In Your DNA?
Growing up in a single parent or more accurately, single mum family, I have always wondered about the ‘other half’ of my history and background. DNA is so fascinating and allows you to delve deeper into your ancestry. I recently heard about 23andMe where you can purchase one of two kits in order to find out more information about your genes and health. The basic ‘ancestry service’ kit is £79 and the ‘health + ancestry service’ kit is £149; I went for the latter.
Once you pay for the kit, they send you a tube for you to essentially spit in. I would recommend doing this when you have time and when you are alone, because let’s face it, there’s nothing elegant about spitting into a thin tube and having someone witness this. You have to fill up your saliva to a certain line (which by the way took forever), and they give you specific instructions on how to package it up. I would strongly advise you to read all the instructions before, during and after this process to make sure you have gotten everything right, otherwise you might as well flush £150 down the toilet.
After sending it off, you have to wait some time before it reaches their lab in the US. After this, you have to wait whilst the scientists in their white lab coats and goggles have the rather unglamorous job of testing your saliva to extract information from your DNA. It took a few weeks and when it came back, it gave me results I didn't expect. Though I was born and raised in London, I have South Korean heritage. I thought I was fully Korean but the results told me I was 93% Korean, 6.6% Japanese and 0.3% other S.E Asian.
If you pay for the health check, it also tells you whether you’re likely to be a carrier of certain diseases and what traits you could be more immune to. I was delighted to know no disease variants were detected in my DNA (gold standard some may say!) and that I have a third to sixth cousin somewhere in this crazy world. I’m not about to look them up on Facebook and get all chummy, that’s for sure!
The part I found hilarious was where it tells you whether you’re more likely to flush after drinking alcohol, if you’re likely to have a cleft chin, or a unibrow, if you’re likely to have a more than average fear of heights, or if your wee will smell after eating asparagus. Lovely. It even randomly tells you what time you’re likely to wake up - 8.12am for me apparently.
In some crazy unlikely way, maybe I was hoping to be reconnected to my long lost family, and find a half sibling somewhere (I certainly do have half siblings - just don’t know who and how many) but alas, it was not meant to be.
If you’re interested in your history and health, and if you’ve got money spare, I would say it’s worth finding out your genetic information. But by no means should you use your savings money for it…I don’t think it’s worth it to that extent. If you are interested, here is the link to get yours (NOT SPONSORED):
https://www.23andme.com/en-gb/
Until next time xo
