Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Siche is the dried calyx of the persimmon — the woody, star-shaped cap that sits on top of the fruit of Diospyros kaki. In Korean herbal medicine it is used for one main job: stubborn hiccups. It is also given for belching and for a feeling of gas or pressure rising in the chest.
The honest verdict is that human trial evidence is thin. Most of what we know comes from long traditional use plus laboratory and animal work, so Siche is best understood as a traditional remedy rather than a proven treatment. Long use in a tradition is not proof that something works — that point applies to everything on this page.
It is almost always taken as a decoction (a tea made by simmering the dried herb in water), usually alongside clove and fresh ginger. Ordinary hiccups stop on their own within minutes or hours. Hiccups that drag on for more than two days are a medical problem, not a home-remedy problem.
Nobody has shown clearly how Siche works in people. The traditional explanation is that it settles "rebellious" stomach energy that pushes upward, which is how old Korean and Chinese texts describe hiccups and belching.
In modern terms, researchers have suggested it may act on the nerve loop that drives the diaphragm (the breathing muscle under your lungs) to spasm. That idea comes mostly from animal and test-tube work, not from trials in people.
Some laboratory studies report antioxidant and mild smooth-muscle-relaxing activity from persimmon extracts. Those findings are interesting but they do not tell you whether a cup of the tea will stop your hiccups.
You will usually meet Siche in one of these forms:
Dried whole calyces, sold loose by weight for making a decoction. Cut or coarsely broken pieces for the same purpose. A ready-made granule or powdered extract dispensed by a Korean medicine practitioner, usually as part of a multi-herb formula.
Single-herb capsules exist but are uncommon. Persimmon leaf tea and persimmon fruit products are different things and are not substitutes for the calyx.
Siche has a long and consistent record across East Asia. It appears in Chinese materia medica from the Song period onward and was carried into Korean practice, where it is listed in the Dongui Bogam (1613) among remedies for hiccups and belching.
The best-known preparation is the classical clove-and-persimmon-calyx decoction, in which Siche is combined with clove and fresh ginger. Japanese Kampo practice uses the same pairing.
In Korean households, the calyx was also simply saved from eaten persimmons and dried for later use.
See a doctor if your hiccups last longer than two days, keep coming back, or wake you from sleep. Get checked quickly if hiccups come with weight loss, trouble swallowing, vomiting, or pain in your stomach or chest. Get emergency help for chest pain that spreads to your arm or jaw, breathlessness, vomiting blood, or sudden severe stomach pain with no bowel movement or wind.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Siche is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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