How you can find out if it is likely you have a genetic component to your restless legs

[SueJohnson]

I took the DNA test with 23 and Me and today they offered additional information for $29/year if you signed up for 23 and Me+ which I did, and discovered I have an increased likelihood of developing restless legs.

[Madlegs1]

Exactly what genetic component do you have that makes them come up with that information?

Very interested!🤔

[SueJohnson in reply to Madlegs1]

I have no idea. They didn't say.

[Hidden in reply to SueJohnson]

I really am sorry, I'm in one of "those" moods today.

Man goes to doctor-

Man : "Hello doctor"

Doc : "Hello, sit down, better still, lie down"

Man : "Oh OK. You have some news for me?"

Doc : "The good news is that your test results show you're going to have a heart attack in four weeks time".

Man : "Good news! What's the bad news?"

Doc : "We got the results four weeks ago."

[Hidden in reply to Madlegs1]

Is it not said that there are several genes associated with RLS? The thing is I know I have a genetic component as my mother had RLS & so does my sister.It would be nice to know which associates gene you or I have.

There is a suggestion that eventually ww will all have genomes done & it will be able to be worked out which treatments for which conditions will work need for an individual and what side effects might occur.

I am on 23 and me as well. There is a gene associated with sneezing in sunlight!

[Hidden]

This sounds interesting and intriguing.

Perhaps one day everybody will be DNA tested at birth and everyone can be told what conditions they're likely to suffer in their lives.

This will also allow health services to plan ahead to some extent.

[Graham3196 in reply to Hidden]

It will also help planning education services. Why spend money on education if the pupil will only survive until 40 Or train the early die-ers to do dangerous jobs like removing asbestos or demolishing nuclear power stations.

[Hidden in reply to Graham3196]

Hi Graham,

I am presuming you are being ironical.

Is that correct?

That is, you don't really seriously mean what you've written?

[Madlegs1 in reply to Hidden]

Advanced Malthusianism. 🙄☠️

[Hidden in reply to Madlegs1]

I was thinking of a shorter word beginning with "f".

TWO syllables.

First syllable ----

[Graham3196 in reply to Hidden]

Please no Irony or fear. I'm not promoting this a s a policy but I am very worried that I am only taking an extreme case of what is likely to occur. I have no respect for most of the foundations of the capitalist system. In Australia our biggest banks have been found guilty of willingly and knowingly supporting money laundering and transferring funds for drug lords, terrorists and pedophile organisations. Their insurance arms have admitted to accepting payment for no service. You buy life insurance and they keep charging you after the insured life has ceased. All these things are done by ordinary people who you would probably expect to be decent human beings if you had dinner with them but as soon as they become part of a large organisation they will follow the standard operating procedures. Would you be surprised if insurance companies started demanding a DNA test as part of their normal medical examination? They would call it risk management and suggest that it was unfair for them to have to charge the ordinary person a higher premium just to cover the person with a bad outcome that could have been predicted by a DNA test. Just simply being fair they would say. I think its just the opposite to socialism where we all agree to look after the other members of our community.

Right now we are hearing the right wing saying that money is more important than the lives of elderly people or those with covid-19 and comorbidities. I have trouble believing that real live politicians can say that without being expelled from polite society. I could go on but I would probably be called an extremist.

[Madlegs1 in reply to Graham3196]

Well said!👍

[Hidden in reply to Graham3196]

Hi Graham.

You WERE being ironical!

Which is a great relief, because if what you wrote in itself taken at face value is reminiscent of 1930s Germany, Eugenics, enforced sterilisation and using "flawed" people as slave labour.

I'm glad you responded then.

I wouldn't accuse you of being extremist at all. I quite agree with most of what you write.

You may be in a minority though. I'm not really sure, by which I mean there may not be many people like you.

I suspect my views are more extreme than yours. I look at the people around me where I live and it seems to me that they are mostly brainwashed and living in a reality that has been created for them where consumerism is paramount.

It's pervasive, In the UK web sites are governed by The General Data Protection Act, i.e. when you go on a web page, you get a pop up saying "We use cookies, do you agree to this?" It's easier to agree than not too. These are largely"tracking" cookies, they monitor your online activity. The purpose of this is "To improve your personal expereince". NO! It's so they can try to sell you stuff they think YOU might buy.

They even know where you are! I suspect they know what colour underpants I'm wearing today. (Light grey, just checked).

There we go, a pop up, latest style grey underpants available in Lancaster UK!

At one time perhaps, social values included the idean of the greatest good for the greatest number in terms of having useful fulfilling lives with minimal suffering. An ideal perhaps. Officially maybe still the ideal, but in practice the greatest good appears to have turned into, the greatest possessions and the greatest number means that people are mainly making goods or providing services for other people to consume. This is what society is now about, people "providing" things and people "consuming" them I suspect this is modern Marxism. There is of course the third group, the small minority making money from all this activity often without doing anything useful themselves at all. Russian Oligarchs a prime example.

My wife has fond memories of her childhood and early adulthood in the soviet union, it had its flaws e.g. the KGB, limited travepl and little information about the rest of the world, misinformation etc. However she had no worries about being fed, clothed, housed, being educated, being looked after if ill, being part of a community and having fulfilling things to do with her life that helped others.

There is a profesor of Russian History living near me, He tells me that Russion history is very hard to predict.

THE pandemic has showed things up signficantly it seems. OMG, businesses are clsoed and not selling anything,people's income is lessened so they can't spend as much.

I believe my neighbours, (nice enough people really) are an example of "good" consumers. They have the latest fastest broadband deal, probably have the latest iphones. They have a BIG dog, they have a recent model diesel guzzling SUV. They have lots of yard toys for their kids, huge plastic ones. They fly abroad for holidays when they can ( a human right now apparently). They recently had their hedges removed and a fence with concrete posts erected. They had all their natural grass removed and reppaced with concerter flags and artificial lawn made of some kind of plastic, I guess. (1000GBP or more). To put all that toigether, I imagine prodiuced a lot of carbon emeisiion and their yard is now totally devoideof anything that might absorb that carbon and give oxygen.

You can stop reading now if you like, I'm well into a rant.

This brings me to morality.

At one time what was right and what was wrong was very clear and in the west most people acceopted the ethics of the church, whether they agreed or not.

I'm not going to go into a historical dioscourse, butdifferent versions of morality now appeared to be based on differing underlying principles with different people adfhering to them.

Some still appear to follow religious concepts of right and wrong

Some adhere to the humanistic/rationalist principle that I can't expect other people to do me no harm ifI harm them OR do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

More recently, the every day morality is it's OK to do it, if you can get away with it. The police here regularly use a speed camera on a particular road here, limit 30mph. They say one in forty vehicles go over the limit.

Here, speed limit 20mph, no speed caneras, ever. Mulitple cars going over 40mph about 30% of them.

Another everyday morality, if I want it, then I should have it. As seen onTV, the loser in a competition, "I should have been the winner because I really wanted it".

I do apologise, I'll stop now. My next rant may be about democracy,

Some say my posts are better than a benzodiazepine.

Keep up your good work on this forum.

[Madlegs1]

Wait till all the insurance companies get hold of this information!?🤔

[Hidden in reply to Madlegs1]

That could be a problem!

Insurers might include this in their medical assessment when applying for insurance. Perhaps some do already.

When I recently applied for health insurance I was rejected. If I hadn't been, I'm sure any (insurable) health conditions I have (e.g. multiple joint degeneration) would have been reflected in the premiums.

I wonder how it works in countries with limited or no public health servicies?

Luckily, funeral insurance isn't so variable and it doesn't require a medical.

One of my students years ago wrote, "more people are dying these days". To which my comment was,"Didn't everybody use to die?"

I'm very pedantic about language or is that pandatic as in Eats shoots and leaves fame?

[Newmomma567 in reply to Hidden]

It means you’re kind of screwed. In the US, there aren’t the same public health services and a lot of people needlessly suffer. I didn’t have health insurance for years (couldn’t afford it) and I just prayed I was never in a car accident or contracted a serious illness because I would have to pay for all the treatment out of pocket (which is astronomical). Sometimes you can work put a deal with a doctor if you’re “self-pay,” but not always.

It’s far from ideal.

[Joolsg in reply to Newmomma567]

It's such a shame that the US is so resistant to healthcare systems like those in Europe and Canada. Mind you, several great series would never have been made if you had decent healthcare. Breaking Bad would not happen in Europe because Walter White would have received his cancer treatment for free and wouldn't have needed to become a master criminal.

[Hidden in reply to Joolsg]

What a thought! Bad health care as inspiration for good drama.

You may not have noticed but Dan Brown wrote about the pandemic years ago! (Inferno).

In the film (movie) our hero manages to find the phial containing the virus before the virus is released. Unless I'm from another dimension, in the book, by the time he finds the phial he's too late and the virus IS released and spread round the whole world.

Unlike covid it only causes 50% of the world population to become sterile.

My wife's conspiracy theory is that covid is a deliberate attempt to lower the world's population. I say, it doesn't really show much chance of succeeding then. Her response THIS one is only a practice.

An unrecognised consequence of the soviet union, in Russia, conspiracy theorism is a hobby!

Similarly also see the film (movie) 12 monkeys starring Bruce Willis Eckbom.

30 degrees here

[sweetiepye in reply to Hidden]

An RLS joke sort of , lol

[Hidden in reply to sweetiepye]

Well spotted!

[SueJohnson in reply to Hidden]

If you get health insurance under the Affordable Health Act, it can't exclude per-existing conditions nor charge you more. The same is true for Medicare. However private health insurance can.

[Hidden in reply to SueJohnson]

That's good to hear.

Presumably then it's only going to be a problem for those applying for private insurance. It could be a major problem though if you're genetically tested at birth.

"We can't insure you because you're going to have a heart attack when you're 35".

"But I'm only 34 and I have nothing wrong with my heart"

"Sorry it pre-exists in your genes".

[Madlegs1 in reply to Hidden]

Exactly. Every insurance application will have a box asking about preexisting health problems. If you've had a DNA report giving various medical possibilities, what do you declare ,without invalidating your cover?Personally,I wouldn't get one. ( A DNA test)

A--- I don't want to know my future. I live as healthily as possible, and consistent with an enjoyable life.

B-- I can obtain private health insurance, without lying or compromising my cover.

Great debate!!👍🤓

[Hidden in reply to Madlegs1]

Yes, think I'll not bother with the DNA test either

I know that when I rub the place between my thumb and first finger it makes my ear itch, that's probably genetic.

When my wife puts her knitting needles away I get a pain between my eyes. Is that genetic?

[Madlegs1 in reply to Hidden]

No-- that's just where she stores the needles!😜

[WideBody]

I would start with a home genetic test, like 23andMe. Then start here: sciencedirect.com/science/a...

It is possible to look up each SNP.

[Graham3196]

If you have contact with your parents and grandparents you can ask around. Both my parents had RLS. My siblings have mild RLS. Three out of three daughters have or had RLS.

Of course we all lived in the same houses at some stage and we all had very similar diets during the first 30 years.

I reckon you would be best to just accept that it might be genetic and work around that.

I don't see any advantage in knowing that I have a genetic tendency unless it reveals some useful treatment.

Did the analysis company come up with RLS without you hinting that it was particularly interesting to you. That is did you ask them to see if you had a genetic tendency to RLS or did you just give them some DNA and ask them to tell you what your future health might be like?

[Madlegs1 in reply to Graham3196]

Very good observation.👍🤔🤓

[SueJohnson in reply to Graham3196]

No I did not hint that it was interesting to me nor ask them to see if I had a genetic tendency. It was simply part of their report on a number of things that they would do for everyone. For instance it reported if I had a greater than normal likelihood of having high blood pressure.

[Graham3196 in reply to SueJohnson]

Its a worry that a company doing commercial tests on DNA seems to know more about RLS than many in the medical profession. Now I am wondering if they can predict or discover food allergies or intolerances? I would pay a lot for that if I thought it was accurate.

I had a friend who found a lump but her doctor dismissed her fears of cancer for a long time before she was properly assessed and found it was too late to cure. She should have had a few second opinions but I wonder if it would have been given more attention if she had a DNA analysis indicating a propensity toward cancer.

Could you get a test under a false name?

[Madlegs1 in reply to Graham3196]

I like your way of thinking!🤔

[involuntarydancer]

My 96 year old neighbour did one of these tests (she got a present of it) and it revealed that her brother's deceased son (ie her nephew, who died tragically in an accident years ago when in his 20s) had unknowingly fathered a child when he donated to a sperm bank to make money as a student. This child (also a boy but now in his late 30s) turned up to visit my neighbour out of the blue. She said it was like seeing a ghost he was so like his father.

You couldn't make it up.

[Hidden in reply to involuntarydancer]

Reminds me of a programme years ago, you may have heard, "Surprise, surprise" with Cilla Black. You may have been lucky enough to have missed it in Ireland.

One of the things she did was have checks done on people who had bought tickets for the show and even talked to their relatives without the person knowing. Then on the night of the recording, the person would be asked up onto the stage (shock!) Then they would be "surprised".

One time this lady was asked up. then"Surprise, surprise, here's your long lost brother who you have had no contact with for 45 years. All the way from Australia"

Smiling man walks on stage. Look of shock (and horror) on the lady's face.

You could read the thnoughts on her face. OMG, it's that b-----d, I thought I'd never see him again!

The man, This is great, I get a free all expenses paid trip to GB and get to appear on Brit TV.

Cilla, "Lets go to the commercials whilst these two greet each other"

I may be a cynic.

It's a bit like SETI, spending millions on trying to contact aliens. Stephen Hawkings take on this, do we really want to contact aliens, maybe they'll just come and wipe us out.

Further, I think if somebody turned upon my doorstep and said I came from one of your donated sperm. I think I'd say, "Great, have you come to give it back?"