HOVENIA DULCIS: THE PLANT SOURCE

What the Plant Is

Hovenia dulcis Thunberg is a flowering tree in the Rhamnaceae family, native to East Asia and commonly called the Japanese raisin tree, the Chinese raisin tree, or the Korean raisin tree depending on which side of the Sea of Japan you are on. It produces edible fleshy peduncles (the structures that hold the fruit) that taste roughly like raisins, hence the name. The medicinal parts used in traditional preparations are the dried fruit, the seeds, and the stem branches¹.

The plant has been cultivated and used as both food and medicine across China, Korea, and Japan for at least a thousand years. The Chinese Materia Medica Compendium of 1578 lists Hovenia dulcis as an anti-alcoholic herb, with the recommendation to use it for both acute intoxication and for what we would now call hangover and alcohol-related liver problems².

Why It Was the Source for DHM

When researchers in the 2000s started looking at traditional Chinese alcohol-related herbs through modern pharmacology, Hovenia dulcis was an obvious starting point. The most active compound in Hovenia extracts turned out to be dihydromyricetin, a flavonoid concentrated in the fruit and seeds. The 2012 Shen paper out of UCLA, which is the foundational modern DHM study, used isolated DHM rather than crude Hovenia extract, but the trail of evidence that pointed researchers to DHM started with the traditional use of the parent plant⁴. (this is one of those cases where the modern pharmacology literature lined up with a thousand-year-old traditional use, which is unusual enough that it caught my attention.)

What Hovenia Extracts Do in Modern Studies

A 2017 randomized controlled crossover trial in healthy human subjects with the heterozygous ALDH2 variant (the genetic background most associated with poor acetaldehyde clearance) tested a standardized Hovenia dulcis fruit extract against placebo for hangover symptoms. The Hovenia group showed reductions in several hangover symptom categories compared to placebo³. The 2024 review of Hovenia in alcohol-associated liver disease covers the broader animal and clinical literature on Hovenia extracts and concludes that the alcohol-related effects are documented across multiple study designs². The alcohol-clearance and hangover-related effects of Hovenia extracts are documented across animal and limited human work, in the available evidence at least.

Why H180 Uses Isolated DHM Rather Than Crude Extract

The H180 formula uses isolated DHM rather than a Hovenia dulcis whole-plant extract. The reasons are dose precision and consistency. Crude Hovenia extracts vary considerably in DHM content depending on the part of the plant used, the extraction method, and the harvest season. Isolated DHM lets us specify a 1,500mg dose per serving without the per-batch variability that crude extracts introduce¹. The modern formulations use isolated DHM rather than crude Hovenia extract, adn that purification matters for dose precision.

What This Page Is Not Claiming

We are not claiming Hovenia dulcis whole-plant extract and isolated DHM produce identical biological effects. They are related but not equivalent. Crude extracts contain other Hovenia constituents (including hovenitin and other flavonoids) that may contribute their own activity. The modern DHM literature is built around the isolated compound, and that is what the H180 formula uses, with the historical context that DHM was originally identified through investigation of the traditional Hovenia preparations.

For the related plant source that also produces DHM, see Ampelopsis Grossedentata -- The Vine Source. For DHM's chemistry as a flavonoid in detail, see DHM as a Flavonoid.