What are genetic disorders?

A genetic disorder is when something goes a little wonky with the special instructions inside our body’s cells.

Imagine your body is like a toy factory, and every toy it makes has a recipe written on a tiny piece of paper. These papers are called genes, and they tell the factory how to build everything from your hair color to how your heart beats. Now, sometimes these recipes get mixed up or have typos, that’s when a genetic disorder happens.

Let’s say you’re baking cookies, and instead of “1 cup sugar,” the recipe says “1 cup salt.” Your cookie will be super salty, not quite what you wanted. That’s like a genetic disorder: the body follows a slightly wrong instruction, and something doesn’t turn out as expected.

Sometimes this happens because one of the tiny papers (genes) has a mistake in it. Sometimes it's because two people pass on their wonky recipes to their child, that’s how some disorders start.

Your body is making cookies every day, all year long. If the recipe gets mixed up just a little bit, you might end up with something special, or something not quite as expected.