DHM BIOAVAILABILITY

The 4 Percent Number

If you read enough DHM literature, one number keeps coming back. A pharmacokinetic review of DHM put the absolute oral bioavailability of standard-formulation DHM at approximately 4 percent in rats¹. That means for every 100mg of DHM you swallow, only about 4mg actually makes it into circulation in usable form. The rest is broken down in the gut, never absorbed across the intestinal wall, or chemically degraded before it reaches the liver.

The reasons are straightforward. DHM is poorly water-soluble. It is also chemically unstable in the moderately alkaline pH of the small intestine, where most absorption happens. The molecule has two strikes against it before it ever gets a shot at doing its job.

Why the 4 Percent Is Not a Dealbreaker

Low bioavailability is a problem you can engineer around in three ways: by raising the input dose, by improving the formulation so a higher fraction gets absorbed, or by combining the compound with a delivery agent that helps it cross cellular membranes. A 2022 review of DHM drug delivery strategies covered all three approaches across formulation chemistries -- lipid nanocarriers, gastric floating tablets, self-emulsifying systems². The takeaway: each format change can roughly double or triple the bioavailability, so 4 percent isn't a hard ceiling, in the formulations that have been studied carefully at least.

There is also direct evidence that DHM, when administered orally, reaches concentrations in tissue that correlate with measurable biological effects. A 2021 mass-spec study identified intact DHM and its primary metabolites in mouse serum and brain tissue after oral dosing, with kinetics consistent with the behavioral effects researchers had been measuring for a decade³. So the compound is reaching the right places, even if a lot of the input dose is wasted along the way.

How This Shapes the Formula

The bioavailability constraint is real, but it is not where the 1,500mg number came from. 1,500mg is where my testing settled: my own tests, and what I saw directly in the people I tested with. No study was used to set it.

We also pair DHM with fulvic acid, which functions in the formula as a cellular delivery agent. Fulvic acid has been studied as an enhancer of mineral and small-molecule absorption across cell membranes, and its role here is less about its own biological activity and more about helping DHM reach the inside of liver cells where ADH and ALDH live. The role of fulvic acid in the formula has its own dedicated page.

The Honest Caveat

DHM bioavailability research has been done in animals, mostly rats. I have found no published study that measured how DHM is absorbed in people; a phase 1 study that includes DHM's pharmacokinetics was registered by the University of Southern California (ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT05623501), but I found no published results. So the 4 percent number is a rat estimate, and the human number is not known.

That uncertainty is one more reason this page does not tell you how much DHM reaches your bloodstream from a 1,500mg serving. Nobody has measured it in people.

What This Page Is Not Claiming

We are not claiming that 1,500mg of DHM produces any particular amount of in-circulation DHM in any individual. Bioavailability varies with food intake, gastric pH, gut microbiome composition, and individual differences in transport machinery, and in people it has not been measured. We are also not claiming the dose was worked out from absorption figures: it came from my formulation testing.

For the upstream mechanism that makes the absorbed DHM actually do something useful, see How DHM Works: The ADH/ALDH Pathway. For the cellular delivery side, see DHM and Fulvic Acid -- The Delivery Mechanism.