FINDING YOUR UNIQUE SELF... THROUGH THE DATA
I turned 50 last year, and in doing so I’ve become increasingly aware of my own mortality. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make me more eager to see a doctor or undergo certain screening tests, especially knowing I have a concerning familial history. My grandma had both breast cancer and Alzheimer’s, my sister skin cancer, and a decade ago a cousin died suddenly from a rare form of hereditary cancer (she was gone within six months of being diagnosed). My father found pre-cancerous polyps in a colon screening, meaning I’ve had to face more frequent colonoscopies.
I’ve become increasingly interested in at-home testing options, especially those that could alert me to genetic risks for certain diseases. You can now mine your genome for clues about long-term health. You can also avoid going to a clinic, yet check yourself for sexually transmitted infections. It’s undeniably simple.
You order a kit online, it arrives in a box with easy to follow instructions. All it takes is a little spit in a tube, a swab of your junk, or the prick of a finger, then you ship the sample to a lab in the pre-paid box. Within a few weeks, you get a notice in your email letting you know your results are ready. And all you have to do is log in and see your results. Here’s a run-down of some of the top at-home health tests.
HOME GENETIC-TESTING KITS
There are a growing number of companies (including Thermo Fisher Scientific, AncestryDNA, and Vitagene) offering DNA testing to reveal aspects about your health.I tried 23andMe ()’s Health and Ancestry kit ($139), which provides an overview of your ancestry, indicates whether you are genetically predisposed for certain medical conditions, and reveals if you’re a “carrier” of others that you might worry about passing down to
