Hoodia Gordonii Diet Pills

Hoodia is a cactus like plant that is found only in the semi-deserts of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola. Within recent years, Hoodia has been marketed as a weight loss product and has become extremely popular.

While there has always been a demand for diet pills, the market was particularly open to a new diet pill when the herb ephedra was banned. The popularity of Hoodia is largely based on the claims that the San Bushmen in the Kalahari desert have used the plant for thousands of years in order to fight off hunger and thirst during long hunting trips. It is claimed that they cut off the stem and ate the bitter-tasting plant.

Hoodia Gordonii can be seen growing in clumps of upright green stems. It is typically called a cactus since it looks like one, but it is actually a succulent plant. After about five years Hoodia Gordonii's pale purple flowers appear and this is when the plant can be harvested.

Hoodia comes in over thirteen types. However, only one active ingredient has been identified so far. Called P57 it is a steroidal glycoside. It is currently thought that only Hoodia Gordonii contains the P57 molecule.

In 1937, a Dutch anthropologist who was studying the Bushmen of the San tribe noticed that they suppressed their appetite using Hoodia Gordonii. Hoodia was first studied by the scientists at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research or CSIR in South Africa in 1963. The test results claimed that lab animals who were given Hoodia Gordonii lost weight.

Next the scientists as CSIR worked with the British company Phytopharm to isolate the active ingredient in Hoodia Gordonii which they named P57. In 1995 they obtained a patent and P57 became licensed to Phytopharm. Nearly twenty million dollars has been spent by Phytopharm in Hoodia research.

Soon the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer expressed their interest in developed a drug based on the plant. Then in 1998, Phytopharm sub-licensed the development rights of P57 to Pfizer for twenty-one million. Later Pfizer returned the rights of Hoodia to Phytopharm who continues to work with Unilever.

You can buy Hoodia Gordonii in capsule, powder, liquid and tea forms. You can find them in a number of health food stores or online. A derivative of Hoodia is also found in the popular diet pill, Trimspa. Despite the popularity of this product there is no randomized control test that shows Hoodia is safe and effective for humans in the pill form.

In order to get the best results you need to get pure Hoodia Gordonii. There are a number of counterfeit Hoodia products on the market today. About eighty percent of Hoodia products on the market are actually contaminated or counterfeit. Unless the product has been tested by an independent laboratory and proven to have pure Hoodia Gordonii it is best to avoid it. Carefully consider Hoodia buyer's guides, Hoodia ratings and Hoodia comparisons when choosing your Hoodia Gordonii product to be sure you are getting a pure pill and not a counterfeit one.

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