When I was 11 years old, my grandfather Joseph C. Monastra was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. He passed away just a few months later. I am named after him — Tyler Joseph — and his loss shaped everything that came after.
My family responded the way our family always has — by doing something. They founded the Joseph C. Monastra Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research, dedicated to raising awareness and funding early detection research for one of the world's deadliest cancers. I have been involved with the foundation my entire life. And while I eventually found my path in medicine rather than oncology, the lesson my grandfather's death taught me never left — that prevention is the most powerful tool we have, and that catching disease early changes everything.
My medical journey started at Illinois Wesleyan University, where I studied biology and competed as an NCAA Division III cross country and track athlete — earning a national qualifying spot along the way. That experience planted a seed. Living as an athlete taught me firsthand what it means to optimize your body, fuel it well, and think about health as something you actively build rather than something that just happens to you.
After graduation I went to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as a research technologist, studying pancreatic cancer at the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center. What I learned there stayed with me — pancreatic cancer remains one of the hardest cancers to treat, and prevention is still the most powerful tool we have. That realization would later become the foundation of everything I believe about medicine.
I went on to medical school at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton, Florida. It was during my third year that my interest in nutrition and lifestyle medicine came into focus. I began to see clearly that the way we eat, move, sleep, and manage stress doesn't just influence our health — it determines it. And yet we were learning almost nothing about this in medical school.
I discovered functional medicine during this time and found a community of physicians who were asking the same questions I was — how does lifestyle actually impact long-term health, and why isn't this the center of how we practice medicine?
From there I completed my Internal Medicine residency at Swedish Hospital in Chicago — now part of Endeavor Health — where I served as Chief Resident and became board-certified in Internal Medicine. I later earned my certification through the Institute for Functional Medicine. I spent the next five years as a primary care physician within that system, doing work I genuinely loved with patients I cared deeply about.
But over time I found myself making unintentional compromises. A large panel of patients. Short appointments. A system optimized for volume rather than depth. My personal goals for patient care and the goals of a large medical system were pulling in different directions — and the gap kept growing.
Over the last several years I have watched the longevity and healthspan space evolve rapidly, with genuinely exciting, evidence-based developments in how we understand aging, performance, and long-term health. I knew I wanted to bring the best of that science to real patient relationships — with the time, continuity, and individualization that actually makes a difference.
HealthSpan Chicago is the result of that journey. And in many ways it comes full circle — back to my grandfather, back to the belief that prevention is the most powerful medicine we have.
