DNA and fear

[Marianna]

Hi,
Thanks to everyone who reads this.
So here I am. I have been having health anxiety since I remember and reading this forum really helped me in the past.
I also have been having ALS fears before. Once I got myself so crazed that I was experiencing quite intensive twitching in legs, really bad ones. But, again, this forum helped and somehow I got over this.
And here I am again. This is what happened.
Few years back I did one of the DNA tests that helps you find your family and ancestry. I especially didnt do the health version of it knowing it would send me down to hell. But few weeks back I got a message inviting me to upload my raw dna data to this dna institute, for free. And I got cought. I did. Few days later I got a report outlining what diseases I am more or less prone to and, surprise surprise, ALS came up. The report said "you are in a group that has more chance of getting als then 75% of the popukation". It scared me a lot, but I was trying to put some sense to it and to be honest I thought even if I am in the more prone 25%, my chances are stil very very very small. But, as I do, instead of leaving it at that I uploaded the data to another serach engine. I am attaching screenshot of what came back. It looks more serious and I dont understand half of it, but I am terryfied. I am kind of counting on someone to reassure me and tell me they read it and that it is negligable.. If it is true of course.
Needless to say I have been feeling awful. I have bad twitching again (mostly one calf but the other leg too and arms a bit). I know it started when I started thibking about it, but I cant, I just cant relax. On top of that I had episodes of cramping few months back, but started taking supplements and that improved significantly. But again, for the last few days I feel my limbs are weak, my arms are sore... I am probably going crazy...Help!Screenshot_20230424-184548.jpgScreenshot_20230424-184556.jpgScreenshot_20230424-183700.jpg

[Marianna]

Just to add: i am not aware of anyone in my family having als

[Mocadona]

Hi Marianna, I often thought myself about those DNA tests but quickly realised how absolutely awful they would be for me! Statistics are a tricky one, and how you word things can really scare people. I don't like giving much reassurance here, but the cat is out of the bag here and the damage is done! A 1.4x increase risk means that if the standard odds of getting a disease are 1 in 50000, yours are 1.4 in 50000. So you've gone from very rare to... still very rare. When things like the Daily Mail really want to scare people they would call that a "40% increase". Which sounds a lot worse but is the same thing. Relative risk ( which is what this is called) needs to be looked at in the context of the overall (or absolute) risk.