For hydrocarbons, the DBE (or IHD) tells us the number of rings and/or extra bonds in a non-saturated structure, which equals the number of hydrogen pairs that are required to make the structure saturated, simply because joining two elements to form a ring or adding one extra bond (e.g., a single bond changed to a double bond) in a structure reduces the need for two Hs. For non-hydrocarbons, the elements in a pair can include any elements in the lithium family and the fluorine family in the periodic table, not necessarily all Hs.
A popular form of the formula is as follows:
where , ,  and  represent the number of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and halogen atoms, respectively. Each of the terms on the RHS can be explained, respectively, as follows:
*Except for the terminal carbons, every carbon chained to the structure with two single bonds requires a pair of hydrogen atoms attached to it. The number of carbons in the formula actually represents the number of hydrogen pairs required for that number of carbons to form a saturated structure. (This is also true if a carbon is added to the structure, whether it is inserted into a backbone chain, attached to a terminal to replace a hydrogen, or branched out from a carbon to replace a hydrogen.)
*Each of the two terminal carbons in the backbone chain needs one extra hydrogen – that is why "1" is added to the formula. (A branchs terminal doesnt need an H added in the calculation because the H replaced by the brunch can be counted as the H added to the brunch terminal. This is also true for a branch terminated with any element.)
*Except the terminal nitrogens, each nitrogen in the chain only requires one H attached to it, which is half a pair of hydrogens—that is why  is in the formula, which gives a value of 1 for every two nitrogens. (This is also true if nitrogen is added into the structure, whether it is inserted into a backbone chain, attached to a terminal to replace an H, or branched out from a C to replace an H.)
*The  represents the number of hydrogen pairs because it gives a value of 1 for every two hydrogen atoms. It is subtracted in the formula to count how many pairs of hydrogen atoms are missing in the unsaturated structure, which tells us the degree of hydrogen deficiency. (No hydrogen pair is missing if , which corresponds to no hydrogen deficiency.)
*The presence of  is for a reason similar to .
Adding an oxygen atom to the structure requires no hydrogen added, which is why the number of oxygen atoms does not appear in the formula.
Furthermore, the formula can be generalised to include all elements of Group I (the hydrogen and lithium family), Group IV (the carbon family), Group V (the nitrogen family) and Group VII (the fluorine family) of CAS A group in the periodic table as follows:
Or simply,