Balanced - 2. Using Self-Decode to assess longevity risk
In this post, we present one of your options for completing your longevity risk assessment with genetic analysis: Self-Decode.
Once you’ve signed up with Self-Decode, you’re ready to proceed with your longevity risk assessment.
Be sure to have your family health history and Siteman web tool results handy, as you’ll use those to figure out what disease risks you need to focus on!
Using Self-Decode for longevity risk assessment
The Self-Decode digital avatar for longevity risk.
Time to complete: 30 - 90 minutes
Additional cost: $199USD (Optional for medical reports)
Note: The following steps assume that you have completed your DNA test kit and the results have been made available on the Self-Decode platform
Upon logging into the Self-Decode platform to review your genetic results, you might at first feel a bit overwhelmed. There is simply so much information to sort through.
Thankfully, the team at Self-Decode are quite aware of these challenges and have create several onboarding tools to guide you. We suggest you follow along with their introductory tour.
“Uncover your risks”
One of the ways in which Self-Decode have tried to simplify your potentially overwhelming genetic journey is to provide you with a digital avatar which highlights your risk areas.
When you choose a category area to engage with, you’ll have the option to highlight specific longevity risks.
Where to start? How about longevity?
There is quite a lot of exploring to be done here, and you’ll have to patiently wait for the reports you have requested to be generated.
One valuable place to start - there is a ‘longevity’ specific set of reports, which you can generate by following the example image below.
What else should you do? Focus on the information you already have
We suggest that you ‘generate’ a wide selection of the reports that are available and review these results. In particular, you should be sure to generate any reports which are related to risks you’ve identified in your family health history or the sitemap web tool.
For example, if there are heart health issues in your family, start by investigating what you find in the “Heart & Blood Vessels” risk area. If there is a history of Type II Diabetes in your family, start with “Blood Sugar Control”.
For any ‘above average’ or higher areas of risk that are revealed, you should take note of these as a part of building out your longevity risk profile.
Hold onto your results, we’ll be coming back to what to do with them.
An example of reviewing longevity risks with Self-Decode. First, we have used the digital avatar to explore ‘Heart & Blood Vessels’. Then, we have selected the ‘Longevity’ option. From here, we can generate the unique reports for each area of concern.
Accessing Self-Decode medical reports
You can take your longevity strategy to the next level by choosing to access the Self Decode medical reports. These reports can only be accessed after you have paid an additional fee of $199USD to have a 30 minute conversation with a genetic counsellor over a zoom call.
Self Decode health reports, available on their web based platform. Here we we can see higher risk for ALS, Macular Degeneration and Pulmonary Fibrosis.
The good news is that you’ve already completed your family health history, which will make the onboarding questions for this process much easier.
By choosing to add this feature, you’ll be able to see nearly 40 disease risk focused reports (more are being added all of the time). We highly recommend you do this.
These reports are then sorted by their potential impact (consequence) and include very clear information about your likelihood
We suggest you take the time to explore the details behind any of the reports which have “more likely”, “higher predisposition” (or higher) risk likelihood.
An example of a health report where there is a “more likely” likelihood for age related macular degeneration.
In general, you can overlook any of the ‘rare’ or ‘uncommon’ diseases unless you have these also existing in your family health history. For example here we have ALS and Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Focus instead on the age-related disease risks - using the example above, age related macular degeneration is important to consider.
Especially if there is also presence of this disease or related diseases in your family health history.
In this case, we are sharing Nick’s Self Decode reports, and he has family history of retinal health issues.
This means he is taking note of the increased risk for Macular Degeneration in his longevity strategy and will be undertaking steps to reduces this risk.
Go as deep into Self-Decode as you are are able! But don’t try to capture everything. Focus again on any overlaps with known risks or anything that emerges from these reports with high likelihood and that is not a rare condition.
Hold onto your results, we’ll be using them in future steps!
