My 23andme health and ancestry experience
When I met my now-husband, I quickly learned that he was very interested in his ancestry and was very proud of his thought-heritage. He was sharing the knowledge he accumulated over the years and dreamed of visiting the places where his ancestors lived, in hopes of connecting with some relatives, distant or not.
While we're planning to travel to those places, we learned that there is a lot more to add to the list than we initially thought.
Two years ago, I bought him the AncestryDNA kit for Christmas (on sale now through 11/21 - holidays are good times to buy these since they usually have sales), to find out what he really is made of, as I love to say to him. The results came back a few weeks later (I don't remember exactly how long they took) and we were astonished. His entire life, my husband thought he was Scottish and he turns out to be a mixture of just about every continent under the sun (well, except South America). We also discovered that he has about 17% of the same heritage as me - now that came as a shock.
While we were exploring ancestry online, I found 23andme (also on sale now through 11/22), which looks into ancestry as well as genetics and I instantly became curious. Finally, again around Christmas, we bought an ancestry DNA and health kit for each other (for half price off!). Once we received them we followed the instructions and sent them back for processing, using the prepaid package sometime in late January. We received our results sometime in March - the result can take between 4-6 weeks.
To say that we were excited to read the reports is an understatement. I've always been curious about my genetics and I became interested in finding out about my ancestry because of my husband.
I found out I'm 99.9% European, broken into 70.8% Balkan (Romanian), a bit of Hungarian, Italian, and Iberian. It seems that my ancestors have originated in Iberia, mixed with Italians then moved on to Hungarians, and my most recent ancestors were Balkans. Given the history of the country I come from, this makes perfect sense. I was surprised to find out that I have more Neanderthal ancestry in me than 72% of their customers, and, according to the reports, it's coming from my mother's side. Feels good to be somewhat unique, haha.
I was equally surprised to learn about my genetics. I found out that I have some slight health risks (not nervous about it though), but other than that, things seem to be looking pretty good.
I learned I'm likely to drink more caffeine than others - I've been trying to give up coffee, but tea has caffeine as well, and that's something I'll keep drinking; that I'm less likely to be a deep sleeper - I can wake up from the lightest noises sometimes; and that I have the muscle composition of elite power athletes (hmm, OK).
In case you're wondering if the ancestry results for my husband matched those of the AncestryDNA - they did, with slight variations which are due to the number of people that took these tests on both websites. 23andme is a newer service so their database is not as large just yet.
All in all, this was a very interesting process and it opened our eyes in regards to our heritage and even health.
By the way, I couldn't find a better opportunity to post this blouse (re-post to be more exact, see the original post this blouse showed up in), which represents my heritage that I'm proud of; if you want your own unique traditional Romanian blouse, get it here or see more here).
Have you ever tried any of these ancestry or health services?
Until next time.
XOXO,
Em