You might have surely heard about ‘Hoodia cactus plant extract’ by this time as it has been broadcasted by numerous major media sources, like the ‘BBC’, ‘The Today Show’, ‘CBS’ and much more. Because of this, Hoodia Gordonii products have quickly ascended to become one of the fastest growing segments of the ‘diet supplement market’.

Before choosing a Hoodia product you should know that there are many kinds of Hoodia plant, but only the Hoodia Gordonii type has an astonishing ‘appetite suppressing’ quality. These properties have been known about for centuries by a primitive tribe known as the ‘Sans Bushmen’. During mid 1990s an institute called the C.S.I.R. ‘Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’ was conducting a study of native plants eaten by the ‘Sans Bushmen’. Basically, the study was to see what foods, the ‘Sans Bushmen’ were taking that protected the toxic compounds. When the C.S.I.R. studied Hoodia Gordonii, they found it was not only non-toxic, but also it helped to suppress the appetite of animals it used to feed to.

Hoodia Cactus PlantFinally, the C.S.I.R. isolated the active ingredient responsible for the ‘appetite suppressing’ effects and called it ‘P57′. This is the ‘Hoodia cactus extract’. They then sold the rights of ‘P57′ to a British pharmaceutical company called ‘Phytopharm’. You may be wondering how it can be there are so many Hoodia products on the market if only ‘Phytopharm’ has the rights to ‘P57′. The answer lies in the patent laws. You know that, only ‘Phytopharm’ can extract the active molecule called ‘P57′ from Hoodia Gordonii and use it in their product line. But a whole natural plant – in this case the Hoodia Gordonii plant- cannot be patented. As a result, other companies’ can very well produce supplements or products made from Hoodia Gordonii and sell them legally.

The important thing for consumers right now is to make sure that they are buying a product that contains genuine South African Hoodia Gordonii.

Hoodia diet supplement is all natural, and comes right from the African cactus family, which has grown for thousands of years in the Kalahari Desert region. Hoodia has been used by the indigenous bushmen as a natural appetite suppressant and thirst quencher during their long hunting trips for generations.How Does Hoodia Diet Supplement Work?

The reason that the Hoodia appetite suppressant has these abilities is a molecule called P57. Normally, when you eat the glucose (blood sugar) in your body rises and signals your brain that you are full. It is believed that the P57 molecule in Hoodia mimics the effect that glucose has on your brain, telling part of your brain that you feel full, causing you to no longer have a desire to keep eating.Hoodia And Weight Loss

One of the first studies of the African Hoodia cactus was done in the United Kingdom on obese patients. Half of the volunteers were given the Hoodia appetite suppressant, and the other half were given a placebo, or (fake pill). The volunteers were allowed to read, watch television and eat whenever they wanted. After 15 days it was found that those taking the Hoodia diet supplement had reduced their calorie intake by 1000 calories a day. The Hoodia subjects lost weight, even though they had unlimited access to food.Hoodia Diet Supplement

Since Hoodia is a plant, and not a chemical, it is completely natural, and experts say it is completely safe to eat. Scientists have been studying Hoodia for about 10 years and have found no side effects at all. The San Tribesman have been eating the African Hoodia cactus for generations, with no apparent ill effects).Pure African Hoodia Cactus

One way to tell if a Hoodia pill is real is to look for a document called the C.I.T.E.S. Certificate (The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). Since the Hoodia cactus plant is a protected species it can only be sold to an exporter who has this certificate. Can Hoodia Help You

Using the Hoodia diet supplement can mean the difference between success and failure with your weight loss efforts. Curbing your appetite, and stopping the constant craving to eat is the key to losing weight.

If you find it hard to give up your favorite foods, or leave the table after one plate full, then Hoodia could be for you. Hoodia diet supplement can make this a lot easier, for you to accomplish. Remember most doctors recommend not losing more than about four pounds a month. That’s about a pound a week.

You should be able to do that easily with Hoodia diet supplement, and remember, a pound a week adds up to fifty two pounds a year. How quick did this last year go by. Poof and it was gone right. By this time next year, you could be very happy with yourself, if you get started now.

First, let’s talk about where hoodia comes from. Hoodia is derived from a cactus like plant called Hoodia Gordonii that grows in the desert of Africa. It is mostly prevalent to the Kalahari Desert, but there are some small regions where it has spread its reach. The San Bushmen have been using hoodia for centuries to stay hunger free during long hunting expeditions. It wasn’t until recently that the benefits of hoodia were actually discovered, but lucky for the rest of the world, they were.

The ingredients in hoodia are able to trick your brain into thinking that it is full. There is a chemical process that is more complex than can be discussed in this article, but the truth is that hoodia does have the ability to help you lose weight by suppressing your appetite. The common formula is to use pure hoodia extract and encapsulate it into an easy to use supplement. Typically, 2 pills in the morning will be enough to help you start losing weight.

Now let’s talk about what hoodia isn’t. Hoodia won’t increase your metabolism, in fact if you don’t eat enough throughout the day it might actually lower your metabolism. Therefore, you need to make sure that you do eat something. Also, hoodia won’t target fat cells or anything like that. It works by simply causing you to eat less, nothing more and nothing less. Although this might sound simple, just try to imagine what it is like to try to diet. Eventually, regardless of the difficulty of the diet, you give up and start binging on all the foods you’d previously given up. This isn’t productive and is the exact reason why hoodia works. You don’t have to worry about dieting because you simply eat less naturally.

Hoodia won’t take the place of eating right and getting exercise, but it will certainly enable you to lose weight. By consuming fewer calories than you burn each day, the fat will start to slowly melt away. The key is to take the long and steady course so that the fat stays off forever. Forget about diets and hyped up diet products, hoodia is the way to lose weight that won’t come back.

Combine hoodia with healthy eating and some moderate exercise and you’ve got the recipe for creating a perfectly toned body that you’ll be ready to show off all year long. Quit using methods that don’t work and stick with something that works naturally. Hoodia is the answer to long term weight loss success.

So will any South African cactus do when it comes to helping you to stay away from snacks? Indeed not, don’t go to the local florist and buy yourself a desert cactus to eat. Of the succulent and asclepiad genus there are 2,000 species of ascleoiadaceae, divided into 300 genera, half from the succulent category. Hoodia Pseudolithos and Trichocaulon are members of the Trichocaulon sub-section from the Kalahari Desert region of S. Africa that touches Angola, Botswana and Namibia. Hoodia Gordonii is the name of the cactus you will want to get but don’t plan on taking a outing to the South Africa and getting some Hoodia cacti for yourself; the Hoodia desert cactus are under strict control by the S. African government. It is considered an endangered plant and only Hoodia cactus farmers with certification may produce and sell the Hoodia.

Can Hoodia affect the world’s obesity problem and help the planet be a slimmer place? Business organizations including, Council for Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), Phytopharm, Pfizer and most recently Slim Fast all believe so. All of these companies have banked on Hoodia’s success and together have invested millions of dollars, wanting to corner the marketplace on weight loss. Looking at Hoodia’s journey from Xhoba, plant of The San Bushmen to being today’s miracle plant for weight loss we need to first look at where Hoodia’s been over the past thirty plus years. The greatest amount of time, CSIR analyzed Hoodia to isolate the molecule p57, once they eventually obtained it; they then sold the rights of p57 to Phytopharm. In 1998 The Phytopharm Company leased marketing rights to Pfizer, who invested thirty-two million only to subsequently drop out of the scene because p57 was too expensive to synthesize as a pill. Pfizer’s situation has now been taken over by The Unilever Corporation, the parent company of Slim Fast. Slim Fast at present plans on delivering a Hoodia weight loss supplement to nutritional stores in a couple years.

Almost a year ago, on November of 2004, the Hoodia plant contracted big media coverage when CBS’s Sixty Minutes did a show on Hoodia’s appetite suppressant qualities. With the 60 minute TV exposure, Hoodia was now wanted plant by dieters all-round the globe. People having a hard time staying on their diets desired Hoodia now, not in a couple of years, the secret was out and Hoodia was becoming an indispensable plant. I’m sure after that 60 minutes program was aired, numbers of dieters looked into moving to the Kalahari Desert and making themselves a tiny Hoodia garden of their very own. Luckily, as it is today there isn’t a reason to go to that extent, where there is a consumer need; there are many businesses happy to fill that request. There were a few businesses that were informed of Hoodia before the news coverage broke and were in the right place at the right time. It didn’t take long though for numerous other organizations to create associations with South African Hoodia Gordonii growers and get Hoodia supplements into stores.

Nowadays there are numerous brands marketing both Hoodia powder form and extracts; how long will the Hoodia plant supply last is the question on dieter’s minds right now. The Hoodia Gordonii succulent is a very hard plant to grow; the plants need very much care and management with irrigating, temperature and sunshine. Where it stands today there are only a couple of Hoodia harvesting centers in the South Africa and the Hoodia plant takes two to three years before it’s ready to be exported. Taking this into account, the multi-million dollar question is, for how many months can the Hoodia succulent plant export continue? Because of this situation buyers should be aware if the Hoodia they are getting has been independently tested and certified to be pure Hoodia Gordonii from South Africa. There are companies out there taking advantage of the great demand and interest in Hoodia and supplying a low quality product. For more information about Hoodia go to http://hoodiagordonii.totalink.com

Basically, hoodia godonii is a kind of cactus that is able to control and suppress one’s appetite and therefore promote immediate weight loss.

Believe it or not, television programs such as ABC, 60 Minutes and BBC have focused on hoodia in their news stories.

The hoodia gordonii is usually sold as capsules, tea or in liquid form in those food health stores as well as thru the internet.

The hoodia gordonii plant is found in the deserts of Botswana, South Africa, Namibia as well as Angola.

Contrary to popular belief, hoodia is not a cactus but a kind of succulent.

Hoodia is composed of a flower that is colored purple and could be harvested after five years. Although the hoodia plant consists of twenty types, the variety of hoodia gordonii is the one that possess the ability to suppress appetite.

The history of hoodia as a weight loss product

Hoodia was just discovered only recently as an effective product to aid in one’s weight loss.
However, the Kalahari bushmen have been eating it for centuries as a way to avoid hunger as well as thirst to enable them to go on prolonged hunting adventures.

Hoodia was also used by them to alleviate any pain caused by tuberculosis, cramps, indigestion, hemorrhoids, diabetes and hypertension.

It was in the year 1937 when an anthropologist in Denmark studied the bushmen and noted the effectiveness of hoodia.

However, it was only in the year 1963 when the scientists at CSIR or the Council for Industrial and Scientific Research actually began to study hoodia. The initial results were promising as animals were shown to have lost significant weight just after ingesting hoodia.

It was only in the mid nineties when the scientists at South Africa worked with a company in Britain called Phytopharm and was able to isolate the ingredient active in the hoodia plant called steroidal glycoside.

This ingredient was renamed p57 and in the year 1995, it was officially licensed to the Phytopharm Company. So far, Phytopharm has been able to spend twenty million on research.

Another pharmaceutical company, specifically Pfizer, became interested in hoodia and decided to develop it as a drug.

It was in the year 1998 that Phytopharm licensed Pfizer the developing rights on the p57 ingredient for a whooping twenty one million dollars.

Currently however, the rights have long been returned to Phytopharm and are now collaborating with Unilever.

Basically, hoodia gordonii is effective and has been proven to clinically reduce one’s intake of calories as well as fat.

Hoodia’s inner workings

Based on a research done at Rhode Island in Brown University, it was discovered that the glycosides steroidal found in hoodia is able to affect the brain’s nerve cells, specifically the hypothalamus, the area that is able to monitor one’s blood glucose.

What hoodia does is that it is able to trick the brain to think that the body has energy enough to not have to eat, eventually shutting down the mechanism of hunger in the body.

This effect was proven by a correspondent of 60 Minutes wherein she traveled all the way to the country of Africa in order to try to ingest hoodia.

When the correspondent ate hoodia, she found the taste similar to cucumber and lost the craving to drink and eat the whole day. She also felt no side effects like palpitations or indigestion.

In studies conducted on animals, hoodia was able to actually reduce one’s intake of calories anywhere between thirty to fifty percent.

Hoodia info online

Unfortunately, there is much hype when is comes to reading about hoodia online. False claims, inferior products and over priced knock offs are rampant.

When you visit a hoodia site look for one whose product is 100% pure hoodia gordonii, has certification on its purity well documented and posted, and always contains a money back guarantee. This way you know that what you purchase is actually exactly what you will get.

All in all, hoodia is difficult to plant and grow as it takes almost five years for the plant to actually mature in required temperatures of 122F.
This makes the plant supply scarce and since there is high demand, the hoodia cost is also high. Don’t purchase your hoodia by just comparing prices, you must compare ingredients.

If the site that you are looking at shows proof of purity and authenticity, discloses it’s full ingredient listing and offers a full money back guarantee you can be more confidant in your purchase and that the information on the site is factual.

What do we find in a desert? Certainly long stretched dunes of sand, poisonous reptiles, dangerous insects and vegetation of cactus like plants. This is what we get in the Kalahari Desert, one of the notorious places known for scarcity of food and water. No one can imagine that the desert can give something beneficial. But a cactus like plant which is found in the Kalahari Desert works as a powerful appetite suppressant. The name of this plant is Hoodia. Anyone can confuse this plant with cactus, but it is a succulent vegetation of desert. Hoodia alstonii, Hoodia currori, Hoodia dregei, Hoodia flava, Hoodia juttae, Hoodia mossamedensis are a few species of this succulent. But the appetite suppressant which we use comes only from Hoodia gordonii

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San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert know about the medicinal property of Hoodia for centuries. Hoodia like a true servant has been serving them since ancient time. Appetite suppression is a necessity for hunters in desert. Bushmen of the Kalahari are hunters and gatherers therefore, appetite suppression is essential for them too. Before going deep into the desert, they used to chew Hoodia plant to control their appetite. This effectual medication remained hidden from outer world until 1977, when South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research separated P57 from Hoodia plant. The council licensed Phytopharm (the UK based pharmaceutical) for manufacture of Hoodia appetite suppressant in the year 1995. Now Phytopharm is isolating P-57 from Hoodia plant and synthesizing it in Hoodia diet pills and capsules. Appetite suppressant Hoodia is available in health drink form too. Currently, Phytopharm is growing Hoodia gordonii on large scale and marketing it with Unilever. Hoodia increases the level of blood sugar as well as stimulates hypothalamus. Hence, brain is fooled about the presence of food in the stomach. Take a Hoodia diet pill in the morning and you would not feel excessive urge for food for the entire day. Hoodia medication should be taken before breakfast on an empty stomach. One pill of this appetite suppressant is enough for the entire day so overdosing is forbidden in any case. The medication is only meant for obese i.e. people with body mass index 30 or above it. There is no need of doctor’s prescription for using Hoodia but consultation with your doctor before starting its use is advisable.

In a healthy human being Hoodia gives no side effect. However, in pregnant ladies, breast feeding mothers, women planning to bear child and in children its effects are not studied thoroughly. So they must abstain from Hoodia.

Now, you know the significance of the Kalahari Desert and Hoodia gordonii plant for an obese. Buy Hoodia through an online order and get rid of obesity. An online order delivers Hoodia at your doorstep.

Before I go into my review of Hoodia weight loss products and diets it’s important to have some understanding about how Hoodia weight loss products came onto the market in the first place.

The incredible popularity of this product is a direct response of broadcasts on such highly regarded programs as Today Show, 60 Minutes and the BBC (not to mention Oprah). The powerful weight loss properties of the Hoodia Gordonii plant have been well-known and widely utilized by the bushmen of the Kalahari desert for centuries. They had the Hoodia weight loss secret all to themselves until in the mid 1990s when the Council For Scientific And Industrial Research undertook a detailed research study on the many native plants and bush foods eaten regularly by the “Sans Bushmen”.

What the CSIR soon found out was that the Hoodia Gordonii cactus plant is not only not poisonous but it also contains some incredibly powerful weight loss and appetite suppressing properties This detailed research was found as a result of watching how animals reacted when eating the Hoodia cactus plant. Incredibly enough, when rats took Hoodia Gordonii they lost all desire to eat and started to lose weight with Hoodia!

Following on from the substantial claims of fast weight loss numerous Hoodia Gordonii diet products have ascended the marketplace to become one of the fastest selling and fasting growing weight loss products in an marketplace where billions of dollars are spent annually on weight loss products. The truth is that people all over the world are bigger than ever. This is because we are less active in our lives and as a result of the food choices that we make.

Before deciding on a Hoodia product to aid with your weight loss it is critical to understand about more the Hoodia weight loss cactus plant. Once the CSIR had managed to isolate the potent in the Hoodia cactus plant that was responsible for appetite suppressing and increasing the body’s ability to burn fat they called it p57. The CSIR then onsold the licence to P57 to a British pharmaceutical organisation known as Phytopharm. Read my shocking Hoodia weight loss diet now at the website below before you buy any Hoodia weight loss product!

It is somewhat alarming that there are such a number of Hoodia weight loss and diet products available for consumers when Phytopharm holds the exclusive rights to the P57 molecule found in the Hoodia Gordonii plant. While Phytopharm actually is the patent holder P57 there are a number of patent laws that come into play.

The truth is that while only Phytopharm can legally extract the potent P57 molecule found in the Hoodia Gordonii plant the whole Hoodia Gordonni plant is never able to be patented itself. As a result of this other companies have the legal right to produce their own Hoodia weight loss supplements and products legally without holding the licence to P57, however, my understanding is that they are unable to put on their labels that their Hoodia product assists with weight loss in any way.

With such a number of products and Hoodia weight loss diet pills now available from the Hoodia cactus plant it is absolutely vital that consumers don’t fall for cheap, ineffective Hoodia weight loss imitations and that they ensure that they only use PURE South African cactus Hoodia Gordonii products for maximum weight loss results. Click on the link below now to learn the best Hoodia weight loss products for fast, safe weight loss.

There are problems associated with growing the South African Hoodia cactus for commercial purposes. First, logically, is temperature. In order to thrive the Hoodia cactus requires desert like temperatures. Second is time. It takes four or five years for the African Hoodia Gordonii cactus to reach full maturity. Quantities of the wild plant are extremely limited and are protected by the governments of South Africa from harvesting. Phytopharm, the first company to research the properties of the African hoodia cactus, has established plantations in South Africa, but will not begin to sell their patented product for at least a couple of years.

It is important to note that there are more than twenty different varieties of hoodia, but only Hoodia Gordonii is believed to contain the natural appetite suppressant. Some companies may be selling products that are purported to contain the African hoodia cactus, but if it is not Hoodia Gordonii, then it may not work. As with all health supplements, it is best to buy hoodia products from a reputable company that sells a complete line of products. In addition, dieters are advised to remember to drink plenty of water since hoodia suppresses thirst, as well as appetite.

By any name, the African hoodia cactus is a beautiful plant. Flowers are pale purple and appear after the plant reaches maturity. Even though dieters would love to have a large immediate supply, it is important to protect the wild African hoodia cactus from over-harvesting, so that it can be enjoyed by future generations.