A Bucket of Spit

 My wife has found some entertainment from the results of her 23andMe test results. She recently got an update, which included some shifting around in her genetic background. We were surprised when she got her first results, because has a great grandmother who was said to be Italian, but Liz only came out at 1% Italian, based on markers. With the update, that has risen to 4%. Her Scandinavian markers also increased some. I still wonder how these markers are defined, but I'm not surprised that they get adjusted over time. More data means better analysis, I expect.

So Liz got me a kit. Today, I opened it up, spit in the tube, and sealed it up for mailing. Some time in the future, I will get some results, assuming the package arrives at the destination, and nothing goes wrong in processing, and all those other steps that must be completed to get a report on my genetic markers.

I didn't ask for health information. Liz hadn't asked for it; she ordered the basic kit, thinking I was most interested in ancestry, like she was. And it's true; I am most interested in ancestry. I don't really care about genetic markers and there correlation with any diseases, though I do support continued research.

In order to get a repost, one must register one's kit. So I registered. And then I answered questions. Health questions. There were a lot of them. The longest set was about hypertension. I was diagnosed with essential hypertension in '10, when I was 47. I was started on lisinopril, 10 mg qd. That is what I take now, and it still seems to be controlling my hypertension. The survey asked about some 50 different medications, it seemed. I knew the names of some. Beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, diuretics. Lisinopril is an ACE inhibitor. It would have been easier, and faster, for me to just say I only take lisinopril for blood pressure, but that isn't how the survey was set up. And I answered all the questions, because I do.

I guess this means I have added a batch of data to some algorithm somewhere. I don't know what they will do with my answers before my sample arrives. I hope the algorithms appreciate my efforts. And I may discuss my results when they come.