Meet Dr. MacKenzie

Chasing the Next Level

The weight room led to football and boxing in high school, then to junior football with the Okanagan Sun in Kelowna. We made it to the national championship game three years in a row, from 1998 to 2000. We lost the first two. In 2000, we won.

Football took me to California and Butte College. I spent my first year sitting out with a torn hamstring, then moved from nose tackle to center. From there I went on to Northwest Missouri State University. At both schools, I was blessed to play with very talented athletes, many of whom went on to play on Sundays.

At Butte College, I picked up the hammer throw, an event in Track and Field. It was the best decision of my college career, because it led me to meet my future wife, Marisa, with whom I share my life and this clinic. The hammer throw, and track in general, taught me an immense lesson: to progress, to achieve anything, you have to do the work, and it’s on your shoulders to do it. In 2006, that work took me to the NCAA Division II Nationals, where I earned All-American honors along with a USTFCCCA All-Academic award.

However, my body kept score along the way. Poor lifting technique I’d picked up early led to repeated shoulder injuries. Quads that were far stronger than my hamstrings led to hamstring tears. Those injuries taught me something else I now use in every exam room: what you don’t measure and correct eventually catches up with you.

The Detour Into Medicine

I started college planning to become an English teacher, until I discovered I couldn’t write a paper to save my life. Working as a student athletic trainer pulled me toward science instead. At Northwest I studied pre-professional zoology, their version of pre-med, worked as a teaching assistant in histology and zoology, and shadowed a local orthopedic surgeon.

Which brings me back to that Muay Thai ring. I walked out of it and into medical school at St. George’s University, with my first two years in Grenada, then clinical training in Brooklyn, NY, and Oakland, CA. Between first and second year, I competed once more, this time in MMA, and I trained jiu-jitsu and MMA all the way through school. It was the outlet I needed once football and track were behind me. Without physical struggle in my life, I feel unbalanced. Training gives me that balance, and the struggle and perseverance it requires make me a better person.

After graduating in 2011, I trained in emergency medicine at the Detroit Medical Center Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit, MI. I’ve worked as an attending emergency physician since 2014, and since 2018 I’ve served as an emergency medicine medical director in Abilene.

What the ER Taught Me

Emergency medicine shows you the end of the story. Shift after shift, I see what years of neglect look like when they finally arrive at the ER doors. So many of those stories started as something that diet, exercise, sleep, and an honest early evaluation could have changed.

That’s why Marisa and I, both former college athletes, opened our first business: a gym in Anderson, California. We owned it from 2017 to 2024. Watching members change their bodies by changing their habits was some of the most rewarding work we’ve done. It also showed me my medical training could reach further than a gym or an ER. That led us to Aledo Empowered Wellness, where my wife Marisa MacKenzie, PA-C, leads women’s wellness and aesthetics, and I lead men’s health.

The Photo

Here’s the part I don’t love telling. After college and medical school, medicine took over my life, and I let myself go. In my late 30s, I saw a photo of myself holding my daughter, and I didn’t recognize the man in it.

I got back in the gym, but not consistently enough to see real change. At 42, I made it real: I set a goal to step on a bodybuilding stage for the first time at 45, and I started planning how to get there.

At 44, in the middle of prep, I skipped my warm-up and let my ego pick the weight. I tore my left biceps tendon off the bone. Almost exactly one year later, I stepped on stage anyway.

Since then I’ve competed five times in Masters and Open Classic Physique. I’ve shared the stage with many excellent athletes and have celebrated their success alongside my own. Bodybuilding has become one of the things I need in life, outside of my family. It’s a true test of perseverance: dedication, repeated failure, and learning to embrace the struggle and do the work. That’s the only way I know to keep growing, mentally and physically. It’s the foundation of my life, it will never stop, and it’s what I preach in my practice.

Why I’m Telling You This

Not because a physique matters to your health. It doesn’t. I’m telling you because I know what it takes to start over in your 40s. To get hurt, and to keep going. If any of this sounds familiar, you’re exactly who I built this practice for.

I’m not going to sell you a prescription from a questionnaire. I’m not going to tell you your labs are “normal for your age” while you feel anything but. I’m not going to parrot protocols that published data doesn’t support.

What I will do is sit down with you, physician to patient. Your first visit is a 30-minute consultation where we talk about your symptoms, history, schedule and goals. Usually one to two weeks later, we review your labs and everything else at your follow-up visit, and together we decide what comes next. If testosterone therapy is appropriate and we start it, I will see you again in six weeks to confirm or adjust your dose. After that, we see each other every 6 months to review data and make changes or additions to your plan. Visit and lab fees are listed on our pricing page.

We work together as a team, with your goals, your plan and your life as the driver. I’ll always be honest about where you stand. I’ll teach you the why behind every part of your plan. When you have questions, I’ll answer them. I ask one thing in return: do the work. Showing up and following through is 90% of change. We can talk all day, but no work means no change. Welcome to the struggle.