What Is DHM — and Why It's the Star of Every Pregame Shot

If you've ever read anything about hangover science, you've probably seen the acronym DHM. But what is it, what does the research actually say, and why did we make it the centerpiece of Pregame?

DHM 101

Dihydromyricetin (DHM) is a flavonoid — a type of plant compound — extracted primarily from the Japanese raisin tree (Hovenia dulcis). It's been used in traditional East Asian medicine for centuries as a remedy for the effects of alcohol, long before anyone understood the mechanism.

What makes DHM interesting to scientists is the specificity of how it works.

The acetaldehyde problem

When you drink alcohol, your liver breaks it down in two stages:

Ethanol → Acetaldehyde (via the enzyme ADH)
Acetaldehyde → Acetate (via the enzyme ALDH)

Acetaldehyde is the toxic intermediate — roughly 30× more toxic than ethanol itself. It's responsible for most of what we associate with hangovers: the headache, the nausea, the inflammation, the general feeling of having been poisoned (because, technically, you have).

Your body wants to move acetaldehyde through stage two as fast as possible, but alcohol overloads the system. Acetaldehyde backs up, oxidative stress spikes, and your liver — and you — pay the price.

How DHM helps

DHM works at both ends of that equation:

It upregulates ALDH activity — helping your liver convert acetaldehyde to the harmless acetate faster. Less acetaldehyde backing up = less damage, less inflammation, fewer symptoms.

It modulates GABA-A receptors — the same receptors alcohol affects. This is why some DHM research shows it can reduce alcohol's sedative and cognitive-impairing effects: it partially antagonizes alcohol's action on those receptors, helping maintain clearer thinking while drinking.

It's antioxidant — DHM scavenges free radicals generated during alcohol metabolism, reducing the oxidative stress load on your liver and brain.

What the research shows

A landmark 2012 study by Jing Liang et al. at UCLA found that DHM significantly reduced both alcohol intoxication signs and withdrawal symptoms in rats, and accelerated alcohol clearance from the blood. More recent human studies have shown measurable reductions in hangover symptom severity.

Crucially, DHM is dose-dependent. The studies showing real effects use 300mg or more — which is exactly what we put in Pregame. A product with 50mg or 100mg is using the science to market the ingredient while delivering too little to matter.

Why Pregame leads with DHM

DHM has the broadest, most peer-reviewed evidence base of any hangover-prevention ingredient. It's not magic — no supplement is — but it's as close to a mechanistically-validated answer to the acetaldehyde problem as currently exists.

We dose it at 300mg because that's where the research lives. Combined with NAC (restoring glutathione), milk thistle (protecting liver cells), and B vitamins (replacing what alcohol depletes), DHM becomes part of a stack that addresses every major pathway of alcohol-driven damage.

That's what Pregame is built on.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.