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YouTube·Website publication: Jan 6, 2026

Have Fibromyalgia? This video is for you - let’s get to the root.

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By Andrew Behrman1 min read

The real root of fibromyalgia? It’s not just pain — it’s copper. We’ve uncovered that fibromyalgia is often driven by genetic mutations (like CBS, GAD1, GAD2) that affect how your body handles copper. The copper builds up in your blood but never makes it into your cells — leading to widespread pain, inflammation, and migraines.

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Original sourceDan Purser MD

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YouTube captions · May contain errors · Added Sep 23, 2026

Captions can mishear medical terms, names, and doses. Check the recording for context. Each timestamp opens that moment on YouTube.

18 timestamped passages

0:03

What's the root cause of fibromyalgia? That's what I want to get into a little bit today. The way that we've studied fibromyalgia, we've discovered that it's not just widespread pain throughout the body, potentially migraines and all kinds of other gut related symptoms, but it is actually a genetic disorder.

0:20

There's a couple genes that we like to look at, CBS and the methylation gene, as well as GAD one, GAD 2, to really get a good idea of what's going on at the root of fibromyalgia. The main issue uh with CVS and with the other ones is that

0:37

these are the genes that produce the proteins and enzymes that process copper in your body. So at at its base, fibromyalgia is an inability to process copper properly. That means that copper is in your blood circulating around your

0:54

body but not getting into your cells. And that's what we did. We took a deep dive into intracellular deficiencies of copper and many other minerals and vitamins to see what deficiencies were being caused by certain genes. And that's exactly what we found with

1:10

fibromyalgia. Add on top of that genetic snips around glutathione and homocyine and all of it compounds creating this inability to process copper properly. And so this affects your metallionines and your cerillopplasmine specifically.

1:28

If you can support your cerillopplasmine and metallionines by utilizing several different minerals and vitamins such as malibdinum, boron, vitamin B6, and glutathione, you can really get those proteins to function the way that

1:44

they're supposed to. So support your methylionine, support your cerillopplasmine, and the copper that's circulating in your blood gets into your cells, gets into where it needs to be. We talk about a low copper diet and a lot of times that scares people saying, "Oh, if you take copper out of your diet

2:00

completely, you're going to die." You need copper. Yes, absolutely you need copper. It's extremely important for many processes, but you only need tiny amounts of it, trace amounts of copper. The problem that people deal with is that many of our foods, many different

2:17

fortified and vitamin enriched products, protein shakes, power bars, those kinds of things, all are enriched with copper. And then many of our foods such as kale, such as avocados, and that we have a whole list of foods have a lot of copper

2:33

in them. And so people are eating very healthily and eating the superfoods that they know they should be eating, but unknowingly getting tons of copper in their diet from these things. This is the copper that's building up throughout your body. This is what causes the

2:50

widespread pain and migraines even is that copper builds up into tender points around the body and this causes pain. This causes inflammation and this is what fibromyalgia truly is. So let's go back to what we said in the beginning.

3:06

If you can deal with these genetic snips by addressing the intracellular deficiencies caused by them, you can make the proteins and enzymes that process copper work properly. On top of that, add glutathione, varss glutathione to really detox and process everything

3:24

the way it's meant to be. We also have our copper balance which is the mix of those of minerals and vitamins to help ceruoplasine and metallines function correctly. Boron, malibdinum, B6 and a couple others. This along with a low copper diet is our

3:40

treatment plant for fibromyalgia and the end fibromyalgia with natural options Facebook page run by Lois Schwagert goes indepth about all of these topics and so much more. on there is a great support group for anyone just getting started. And we always recommend people start on

3:57

the low copper diet. That means just cut out copper as much as you can from your diet, from the products you're taking, from everything and watch your symptoms disappear. It's amazing. Add in the supplements as needed as well, the copper balance and bars glutathione and really double down on processing,

4:14

detoxing from the copper. Again, we need copper. We have to have copper to survive. But the copper needs to get to the right places in the body. It has to get into your cells. So support the systems all around it. And your fibromyalgia, although we cannot cure

4:29

it, we can definitely manage it way better than ever before. And I have my own personal experience with this. I do have fibromyalgia as well, MTHFR, all of the different issues that we treat. And I am living great. So you got this. You can do this. We are here to help and

4:45

support you all along the way. Reach out to us if you have any questions.

MAKE SENSE OF YOUR COPPER RESULTS

Non-ceruloplasmin copper calculator

Use your zinc, total copper, and ceruloplasmin blood results to estimate NCC and the copper:zinc ratio.

Zinc
Total copper
Ceruloplasmin

Copy the units exactly. Use blood results collected together when available; your clinician can help if collection dates or sample types differ.

How this estimate works

This uses the formula in Dr. Purser’s handout: NCC (µg/dL) = total copper (µg/dL) − 3 × ceruloplasmin (mg/dL). NCC percentage = NCC ÷ total copper × 100. Copper:zinc ratio = total copper ÷ zinc, using the same units.

Calculated NCC is an estimate. Test methods and how much copper is bound to ceruloplasmin can affect it. It differs from a direct lab measurement of labile or exchangeable copper. It cannot diagnose fibromyalgia or copper toxicity, or choose treatment for you. Read about the limits of calculated NCC at Mayo Clinic Laboratories ↗

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