If you have a close family member who has suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, it’s understandable you’d be concerned about your own risk of being diagnosed with it. But experts from Harvard Medical School advise you not to worry just because a relative is afflicted.

“People think that if their dad or aunt or uncle had Alzheimer’s disease, they are doomed. But, no, that’s not true,” says Dr. Gad Marshall, assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. “Even though family history adds to the overall risk, age still usually trumps it quite a bit. It means your risk is higher, but it’s not that much higher, if you consider the absolute numbers.”

Dr. Marshall adds that genetic testing is almost never a useful option for people worried about Alzheimer’s: “It’s not going to be helpful, since it won’t tell you whether you will develop the disease. It will only tell you if you are at a greater or lower risk.”

For more information about the relationship between Alzheimer’s and genes, as well as guidelines on what to do if someone in your family is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, you can download the whole Harvard blog post to read as a PDF.