Mayo Clinic holds 11th annual Individualized Medical Conference

(ABC 6 News) – Mayo Clinic is hosting its 11th annual “Individualizing Medicine Conference” Wed. and Thurs. at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester.

The conference features doctors from all over the world.

The theme for this years conference is “Exploring the Exposome”, which is the study of how factors in our environment affect our health.

Doctors at the conference say its critical that we develop a deeper understanding of how these factors affect humans.

“Estimates are that we may have a million or more different types of exposures in our lifespan,” said Dr. Dean Jones, a professor of medicine at Emory University. “We’re trying to understand which of those are most important in disease so that we can then use that in clinical practice.”

Dr. Jones explained that one example of these exposures is that there are 40 – 60,000 chemicals found in commerce products alone.

We’re are not exposed to all of them, but it’s studying things like the skin creams we put on our face or fabric softeners and determining if those chemicals are linked to disease.