Rebuilding Superman
- Dec 12, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: May 15
Enjoy and excerpt from Rebuilding Superman: Regenerating Health, Fitness and Cognition after 35... 50... by Dr Peter Davis.
Please Read First
A note of caution. This paper is NOT theoretical. It may seem to be, with all the science and technical terminology, but in truth it is based on my personal life. The stuff in here works and I am the living example. I began CrossFitting in 2011. I have not only competed at an elite level but have healed myself of serious injuries as a direct result of the extraordinary biological and psychological evolutions my training has forced in me.
I have been athletic my whole life. I was wrestling by the time I was five. I was practicing karate in my teens. I discovered t'ai chi ch'uan and related martial arts in my early twenties and have practiced, and later taught, since then. Practicing old school t'ai chi kung fu has made my body and mind subtle and powerful in a way difficult to describe. Combined with the hard core neuromuscular and metabolic hormonal transformations through CrossFit, these two disciplines have given me the foundation upon which I have built a life I never could have achieved with my former lifestyle.
I know without a doubt that what is described in this paper is authentic and will lead you where I describe. Again, I know because I am, and a few others known to me are, living human examples.
Further, humans are essentially genetically and mimetically determined biological machines; in other words, like it or not, you will turn out nearly identical to your father, mother, and their forebears. This determinism often represents a trap — worse, a prison. There is a possibility of escape and hence, self-determination: you are a machine who can know that you are a machine (no other machine can do this). Your escape: observe yourself, getting to know the real machine you are; remember that knowing yourself is your way out. At some point you will be self-aware enough that you will literally wake up, as if from a long, sluggish sleep; you will then see clearly that everything good described in this paper is possible for you.
What Is Regeneration?
Three Components for Regeneration
Webster's defines regenerate as: "to make over completely," "reform thoroughly," or "be formed again or improved." In humans, regeneration is not merely adding a new arm to a starfish amputee. In humans, regeneration is physical, emotional, and psychological. Intentionally healing, making fit, and enhancing your human capacity is a real possibility — and more.
Although we have discovered that activities such as high intensity interval training (HIIT) activate autologous (the person's own) stem cells and neuroendocrine processes that regenerate nerve and muscular tissue, these apparently physical activities will not be lifelong successful without a highly functional emotional and psychological component.¹ Components do not and cannot stand alone.
We may refer to our psychological component as INTENTION.
We may refer to our emotional component as MOTIVATION.
We may refer to our physical component as ACTION.
Team Up!
Don't try to do it alone! Build a team of thinking, action-oriented individuals to support you. This is a must-have for social animals like you and me. I'll say more about this later.
The power of our mind and strength of spirit are central to healing, regeneration, and performance. Every day more evidence shows that the power of our mind directly changes our physical structure. Researchers at Stanford Research Institute, Duke, Navy Seal Team Six, and the Pentagon's DARPA (U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) are convinced of this: tag the right thoughts with enough emotional energy and you can do what seemed impossible!²·³⁷
Regeneration As Crisis Intervention
Bear this in mind: tempering intention and motivation in action is often forced through crisis. The salamander loses his right arm to a hungry adolescent crocodile. This crisis signals his stem cells to stream towards the point of destruction and assemble a new right arm. Without this crisis little happens. No genetic motivation; no streaming, transforming stem cells.
Healing and regeneration form a continuum. In humans we have observed the spontaneous regeneration of livers and fingertips, not much else. However, medical scientists have learned how to construct "extracellular matrixes" in which they can re-grow new human organs. At the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, doctors have been able to grow bladders starting with the patient's own cells — which reduces organ rejection — and then successfully transplant the bladder into the patient.³ Currently this medical science group is able to re-grow many organs including the liver, kidneys, heart, and gonads. A well-known case involves re-growing the finger of Mr. Lee Spieyak.⁴ At Kaiser Hospital in Roseville, California, physicians using the above described "extracellular matrix (powder)" and infusing it with stem cells were able to re-grow the heel of a young man who had lost a significant part of his heel falling from a cliff. He was a cripple; now he can walk and run.
Regeneration When All Is Well
But the chief goal of regeneration in humans is not organ reproduction or implantation. This is our goal only when the body has suffered a severe trauma. In humans, regeneration serves the purpose primarily of making us youthful again and keeping us young in the first place. And this is no metaphor.
Cosmetic surgery makes us look young but changes nothing inside. Regeneration actually makes us youthful functionally, and in the process creates health, joy, and the potential for extraordinary fitness.
How about having the youthful functional capacities of a twenty-five year old alongside the wisdom and experience of a fifty-five year old? The ability to run, jump, dance, lift, fight, laugh, create, think, heal quickly, and look forward with joy are good benchmarks for youthfulness and successful regeneration.
From Healing to Regeneration
Get to know yourself! Observe your actions, thoughts, and feelings. Do this twenty times each day. Remember what you see. Knowing yourself will give you the courage to regenerate when you secretly have given up or think all hope is lost.
Cognitive and tissue regeneration happen in a continuum of two phases that for practical purposes occur somewhat simultaneously, although at different rates. The first phase is the healing phase, through which tissue and cognitive inflammation is gradually reduced to insignificant or therapeutic levels. Imagine the healing of a skin burn where blistering and reddening disappears as tissue healing takes place. Of course, inflammation must be reduced throughout the entire body.
Cognitive Inflammation
But what is the reduction of cognitive inflammation? We must reduce or eliminate repetitive thoughts charged with inflamed emotions such as revenge, chronic resentment, grudges, paranoia, jealousy, refusing to forgive when called for, and persistent fears that are not based on what is happening right now.
States of cognitive inflammation are at least as dangerous to health and well-being as are inflammatory states connected with awful physical conditions such as Crohn's disease (intestinal) or arthritis (joints). In fact, the condition I am calling cognitive inflammation produces a chronic cascade of potentially life-threatening hormones and neurotransmitters.
Cognitive regeneration cannot happen in the presence of cognitive inflammation. If your attitude stinks you will not get better. The growing plague of dementia, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and neurological decline caused by obesity screams for practical methods of cognitive healing and regeneration. When we are succeeding in this process of cognitive regeneration, the body's immune system will strengthen, stop attacking you — producing autoimmune disasters such as fibromyalgia — and infections will disappear. This prepares us for phase two of regeneration.
When we say regeneration we mean regeneration at the cellular and even molecular and quantum levels. A sick body and mind produces junk cells for the next generation of life. A healthy, fit body produces healthy cells with chemically appropriate receptor sites.
Thus the second phase of regeneration is intentionally rebuilding your brain and body. This paper addresses the requirements for both phases of regeneration. The scope of this paper deals primarily with what I call active regeneration, in which you are taking steps to intentionally regenerate yourself from the inside out.
However, let's take a look at stem cell therapy — a passive regeneration necessitated by trauma to the body. Stem cell therapy at the moment appears to be the best avenue for passive regeneration, using exogenous (from the outside) methods applied to patients who are too sick or unwilling to take active steps to regenerate themselves.
