Interesting genetic results from 23andme

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No, quite the contrary, in fact. I believe I have a rather slow metabolism as I put on weight with alarming ease.

Although I am in the healthy range on the BMI scale, I eat a calorie-controlled diet and I am relatively active, too.

It would seem to me, then, that you wasted your 120 Pounds.

Genetic testing is still in its infancy. Lots of "bugs" to work out.

I don't think it has the intelligence stuff up there anymore. I'm a member too and I never saw anything like that. I am apparently heavily Neanderthal at nearly 3% and my son is over 3% (we're both NT). It says neither of us are good at tasting bitter things and probably like coffee, which we do! There were many biological guesses about us on there, most of which were true, but I didn't see anything about our personalities, our traits, or many things about our senses. Which is too bad.

There is another health report that you can run the raw data file against that DOES tell you all those things, but it can be a lot to read through. Like, for example, I have genetic markers associated WITH autism and other markers associated with a LOW LIKELIHOOD of autism. And there were several things like that- so how do you interpret it when the markers conflict?

I think you can turn that data off. I turned it on, because I want to know everything, but I'm pretty sure I recall being offered the choice when I made my account.

As for why you might want to know about serious fatal disease risk, three reasons:

a) some of these risks can be reduced by lifestyle changes. For example I'm at high risk of developing atrial fibrillation when I'm older, but if I get more exercise and eat a healthier diet I can reduce that risk. Knowing that I'm specifically at risk for that makes me more motivated than just knowing that 'everyone benefits from exercise and a healthy diet'.

b) some diseases can be cured if caught early, but not if caught late. Two of my mother's relatives developed reproductive tumors (breast and ovarian) at a young enough age that my mother and I may be at high risk of the same fate. Both of these tumors can be readily cured by chemotherapy if they're caught early, but fatal if they're caught late. And ovarian cancer is hard to detect. Luckily, 23andme didn't find a risk gene in me, but if they had, I could arrange screening.

c) if it can't be cured or prevented, at least it can be planned for. Take Huntington's disease, for example. It's a form of dementia affecting people in their 40s (usually) and it can't be cured or prevented. It's also an autosomal dominant gene, meaning that if you have Huntington's, your kids have a 50% chance of getting it. (If you have the gene, you have 100% chance of developing the symptoms if you live long enough.) I can understand a lot of people not wanting to know about something like that, but if you know, you can get the stuff you really want to do finished early instead of thinking 'I can do that in my 40s and 50s'. And you can learn what to expect, so you can come to terms with it and plan to make it easier to go through. (For example, adaptive equipment could help someone with dementia do certain tasks, but it's hard to learn how to use a new thing when you have dementia. Learning how to use it before you get dementia could be really useful.) Plus, you can make an informed decision about whether to have children and whether to select for non-Huntington's children (selective abortion or PGD). Personally, I'm pro-life so I would probably adopt instead of having biological kids if I had Huntington's. (Luckily, I don't.)

d) even if it can't be cured or prevented now, maybe it will in the future. Again with Huntington's - what if five years from now, they find a treatment for Huntington's, but it only works in the earliest stages of the disease, before it's usually diagnosed? If you know you have the gene, you could take the treatment as soon as you see the slightest symptoms, or take it pre-emptively once you hit a certain age.

e) if you're interested in helping others, you can participate in research. With the example of the 'wonder drug' for Huntington's, in order to find that thing, researchers would need to study a bunch of people who are pre-symptomatic carriers and follow them to observe exactly what changes when they first start to show symptoms.

I'm not saying you should test. It's your choice, and it should be based on an understanding of how you'd likely react to the worst-case information. For example, if you'd commit suicide right now if you were told you had the Huntington's gene, then I'd say don't get that information - you can live several more years of blissful unawareness that way. And of course you can always choose to get more information if you want, but once you know something you can't 'un-know' it if you wish you hadn't learnt it. But these are some of the reasons I decided I wanted to know everything, even if it was scary stuff.

Each of those markers has a small impact on your level of autistic traits, and they add up together. So an NT would probably have a few autism markers, but it would be far outweighed by non-autism markers. Someone who's BAP would have a few more autism markers, and someone on the autism spectrum would have even more. (Some studies also suggest that autistic women would usually have more autism markers than men do.)

With the list I came up with, it was compiled from multiple sources, so I don't know the exact proportions typical for NTs and autistics. But you could probably figure out typical NT levels by searching up the statistical frequency of each allele. For example with two alleles, if the autism marker for one is present in 40% of the population and the autism marker for the other is present in 60%, then the likelihood of having both markers would be 60% of 40% (calculate 40 * .6), which comes out to 24%. Which is way higher than the frequency of autism, so having those two markers wouldn't be enough to cause autism. Once you add in more markers, you'll get lower and lower percentages. Around 5% of people are BAP, so once you get down to 5% chance, it's likely that the person would be BAP. Autism itself is between 1-2% of the population.

If I get the spoons together I'll see if I can do that for the SNP list I made up. But no promises.