Wellness

[SeaMaiden]

@Moonchilde  Wow! You know your "stuff"!

[Moonchilde]

@SeaMaiden, I'm a researchy-person by nature. I can entertain myself for hours that way ;-)

I started out doing genealogy way before I ever had my DNA tested, so it was easy for me to see that my results were accurate (or not, if they hadn't been). I already knew from my genealogy results that most of my "family stories" were incorrect ;-(

My mother always told me that my paternal grandmother came from an orphanage in Montreal, and we assumed she was French Canadian. I learned a few months ago that she did come from an orphanage - in Chicago - and that both her parents (and maybe her as well) were born in Ireland! I was thrilled. I've always been drawn to Irish culture and knew I had Scots-Irish (i.e. Protestant Irish) ancestry, but this was the icing on the cake. My ancestry is 93% British Isles and Irish :-)

On each company's website I've read the "what you can or can't find out" bits, and read answers to peoples common questions. There are definitely things I'm fuzzy on still. 

But I do know that DNA can't tell everyone all they want to know, and that when it comes to DNA testing women with no testable male relatives are kinda shafted :-(

[Roni18]

@

---

@SeaMaiden wrote:

I am going through the information. It is somewhat interesting....not really surprising results.  97% European. Since I really did not get the complete results on my Father's side( women do not have the Y chromosome to get this) I feel the report is half sided. That was really what I wanted to know more so. My father has passed and no brothers so,  no chance to get that information now. 

---

@SeaMaidenIf I understand correctly, the autosomal DNA results (the ancestry part) is measured from both your mom and dad's sides.  So your ethnicity report should be from both sides combined.  I can see relatives I share DNA with on my Dad's side on Ancestry.com.  

The 23 and me test also includes DNA testing for your haplogroup and this is the one that tests your mother's (women only) side back or for men, the father's side back.  Both my parents did that type of testing some years ago and we did the Ancestry test this year.  To clarify, I did my Ancestry test before they did their tests and I was immediately able to see that I matched DNA with relatives on my father's side that I knew about from my genealogical research.  

I have thought about doing the 23 and me test just to compare and also for the health testing.  But like you I don't know if I want the results for Alzheimer's and Parkinsons because that would probably just give me something extra to worry about.  

I am into genealogy so I am very happy that I took the Ancestry test.  It has already helped me solve one question we had about an ancestor where I had one last name for a female ancestor and my distant relatives had another and they suspected that a neighbor was her father.  I was able to do a last name search for my DNA matches and almost all my matches who had this name in their family tree came from the neighbor's family.  

[SeaMaiden]

@Roni18  Thank-you so much for sharing your knowledge.  I am not as knowledable as you are on how the DNA all works. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me better. I do find it facinating... my Husband said he might like his done as well.  

[IHeartFashion]

Huh, I did this too with 23 and me, and there was no option for me to find out about Alzheimers and Parkinsons. I wonder why :-/

I found out I was 96% European, and 12% of that was Italian (a surprise to me). The rest wasn't a big surprise. I would love to do this for my husband and boys too, I felt it was worth it (and would have loved it if they would have let me know some health results too). 

[MariotaMurielle]

---

@SilleeMee wrote:

I did the Ancestry DNA test. I knew beforehand that I am half Japanese from my mother's side. What I wanted to know was a breakdown of her side of my genes. All they gave me was a huge map of the entire Eastern hemisphere...huh?? Why can't they break it down to individual countries like they do with the other continents?? Very disappointing.

---

@SilleeMee, upload your Ancestry DNA results to Gedmatch. they give you an extremely detailed breakdown of ethnicity. if you're not familiar with Gedmatch there are several good tutorials on Youtube and their own website.

[SilleeMee]

---

@MariotaMurielle wrote:

---

@SilleeMee wrote:

I did the Ancestry DNA test. I knew beforehand that I am half Japanese from my mother's side. What I wanted to know was a breakdown of her side of my genes. All they gave me was a huge map of the entire Eastern hemisphere...huh?? Why can't they break it down to individual countries like they do with the other continents?? Very disappointing.

---

@SilleeMee, upload your Ancestry DNA results to Gedmatch. they give you an extremely detailed breakdown of ethnicity. if you're not familiar with Gedmatch there are several good tutorials on Youtube and their own website.

---

Thank you @MariotaMurielle . I will look into that site. I appreciate you telling me about it.

[MariotaMurielle]

@SilleeMee, there is so much information on Gedmatch and I am in no way an expert on how to decipher it all. but with a little research and some tips from FAQ and Q&A sections online, I have learned how to navigate through quite a bit of the information available. I have found some somewhat surprising information about my own DNA. when you upload your DNA results you will get a Kit #, and with that you can explore so many things.

since you are interested in ethnicity, here's an example of the kind of information you can find.

#	Population	Percent
1	Neolithic	29.68
2	NorthEastEuropean	25.83
3	Steppe	23.55
4	Caucasian	18.17
5	Indian	1.38
6	NorthAfrican	0.64
7	Amerindian	0.36
8	Arctic	0.32
9	Ancestor	0.08

[SeaMaiden]

---

@IHeartFashion wrote:

Huh, I did this too with 23 and me, and there was no option for me to find out about Alzheimers and Parkinsons. I wonder why :-/

I found out I was 96% European, and 12% of that was Italian (a surprise to me). The rest wasn't a big surprise. I would love to do this for my husband and boys too, I felt it was worth it (and would have loved it if they would have let me know some health results too). 

---

@IHeartFashion  there are two tests you can chose . One is just the DNA family history....the other is the family history AND health information.  You pay more for that test than just the family history.  Which one did you get?   I paid $175  for the complete family and health test.  The family  history only test was about $99 or so. 

[Mothertrucker]

---

@Oznell wrote:

That is disappointing, SilleeMee, that they would just give you a map and not pinpoint the specific other Asian elements if there were any.  They don't seem to be able to get really down in the weeds as much as we would hope...

In my family we know quite a bit about the Welsh, English, Irish and French Huguenot strains, but I would love to track down some of the more nebulous things.  For instance, some families that were Huguenot Protestants were actually Jews, and there was some suggestion of that, possibly, in my mother's family.  But since "Protestant" and "Jewish" are religious designations, I wonder if they'd be able to tell explicitly if some of the genetic material was of Ashkenazic (sp?) or Sephardic Jewish origin?  Maybe not.

Not earth-shattering, but would be fun to know.  There was also some Spanish or Portuguese in there some where, which I'd like to know more about...

---

Ancestry most certainly told me "European Jew" ..I will go find out the exact verbage