Craig Hassed, MD
// Senior Lecturer, Monash University Faculty of Medicine
// Inaugural President of the Australian Teachers of Meditation Association
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The ancient Greek physician and father modern medicine, Hippocrates was guided by the principal that the mind and the body are connected. Dr. Craig Hassed not only shares this understanding, but as leading Australian academic and writer he has made it his life’s work to educated medical practitioners and their patients about the latest science proving a mind body connection.
He’s an MD who has published several books and peer reviewed scientific studies that prove the relationship. Dr. Hassed’s studies focus on the cause and effects of stress and immune disease.
“We know that in high stress periods, for example studies on university students show that they get more DNA damage or DNA mutations during high stress periods; and the students who are coping poorly with it lose the capacity to repair the DNA as effectively. So more DNA damage but less DNA repair.”
His ground breaking body of academic work is built on a foundation of science with a focus on proven clinical trials, and he is a leading force in the application of integrative and mind-body medicine, contributing a number of innovations in medical education and practice. In a trailblazing move, Dr. Hassed introduced meditation into the medical curriculum at Monash University as an examinable subject.
“If there was a patentable product that has those kinds of effects, we’d be all over it; we’d be spending billions of dollars on research and rolling it out in no time at all.”
Dr. Hassed has been published in multiple medical journals and has authored several books including New Frontiers in Medicine (Volumes I and ii), Know Thyself and The Essence of Health.
While he has no doubt the mind has a strong impact on our health, such as the ability to repair the immune system, he has a conservative understanding of medicine and argues that the benefit of pharmaceuticals cannot be denied in the treatment of physical ailments.
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