Posts tagged: 60 Minutes

Hoodia Gordonii The Truth vs. Hype

First things first, hoodia gordonii is known in different names such as xhooba, Ghaap, khoba and hoodia cactus.

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.

Hoodia Weight Loss – the Truth About the Hoodia Weight Loss Diet Frenzy

Hoodia weight loss products are being frantically bought by desperate dieters worldwide. However, is weight loss with Hoodia really possible or is it a scam? This article will discuss the truth about the Hoodia weight loss diet frenzy

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.

Hoodia Gordinii – 3 Reasons To Try Hoodia Instead of Diet Pills

Hoodia Gordinii – it’s everywhere these days. On 60 minutes, in the health food store, in your diet pills, on the Internet. You’ve seen it and probably wondered ‘What’s so great about it?’

Hoodia Gordinii is a natural appetite suppressant made from the Hoodia plant – a cactus of the “succulent” cactus family, which grows in the Kalahari Desert region of South Africa. It has been used by the indigenous Bushmen for years as a natural appetite suppressant during long hunting trips where food was scarce.

So what’s so great about this simple South African cactus that has everyone talking about it? Here are 3 reasons why Hoodia is better than any man-made diet pill to help you lose weight quickly and safely:

1) It Helps You Lose Weight Without Hunger or Feeling Deprived

One of the first studies of Hoodia Gordinii was done in the UK on obese patients. Half of the volunteers were given Hoodia, the other half a placebo. The subjects were allowed to do nothing but read, watch television and eat.

After 15 days it was found that those taking Hoodia had reduced their calorie intake by 1000 calories a day. Despite having unlimited access to food, these subjects lost weight without feeling hungry.

People have reported losing 100 pounds in 6 months, 84 pounds in 5 months and up to 4 pounds a week by taking pure Hoodia. So if you’re looking for a way to lose weight but hate feeling hungry or deprived, it can help you to reach your goals without the pain of dieting.

2) It Helps Emotional Eaters Lose Weight

Not only do you feel full when you take Hoodia but many people say they don’t even have the desire to eat. Some say they don’t even think about food.

This is great for emotional eaters – whose weight may be more a result of eating out of boredom or emotional needs than because of hunger. It’s also much easier to make healthier food choices when you feel satisfied and full, which contributes to your overall health and vitality.

3) Natural & Safe With No Reported Side Effects

Sure, you can take the caffeine-filled, chemical laden man-made diet pills and lose a couple of pounds – but why would you want to? You don’t know what else it’s doing to your body – and it could be causing some major damage. One of the best benefits about Hoodia Gordinii is that it’s both natural and safe to take.

Since it is a plant, and not a man made chemical, it has little chance of causing side effects. In fact the South African government classified Hoodia as a food – not a drug. Scientists have been studying Hoodia for about 10 years and have found no evidence of any negative side effects.

Couple this with the fact that the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert of South Africa have been eating it for hundreds of years with no ill effect. You can see why this South African cactus is an amazing alternative to caffeine-laden, questionable diet pills.

While these 3 benefits definitely make Hoodia sound better than any man-made diet pill, there are a couple of things buyers should be aware of:

There are a lot of ‘fake’ Hoodia diet pills out there. Because it is a protected species (and it also takes 2 – 5 years to mature), the demand is becoming greater than the supply and many manufacturers are bottling inferior forms of the cactus that don’t offer you the appetite suppressant effects of pure Hoodia.

Also, you probably don’t want to take the pills forever. You should try to change your diet to one rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean meats etc. before transitioning off Hoodia to maintain your weight loss.

Weight Loss Pills – Why Choose Hoodia Diet Pills for Effective Weight Loss?

Weight loss pills are one of the most popular methods of reducing weight amongst overweight people across the world. Most obese people who find it tough to maintain an exercise regimen or introduce low-cal healthy diet in their sedentary lifestyle take resort to weight loss pills with a desire to easily and quickly shed their extra pounds.With obesity rising by the day and becoming a major cause of concern, demand for weight loss pills is increasing at a phenomenal rate. One needs to be very cautious while selecting a weight loss pill as the market is flooded with fake weight loss pills that only lighten your wallet. In addition, one needs to keep in mind that even using a genuine and effective weight loss pill without a complementing, lifestyle changing weight loss program significantly reduces your chances of effective weight loss.Let’s see how weight loss pills work. Weight loss pills, both prescription and OTC, try to find ways to introduce a gap between calorie intake and calorie expenditure. We can further group them according to their action as;

Appetite suppressants are probably the more successful of the other OTCs. Popular appetite suppressants try to play down your appetite for food. They may get to act on the nervous system to deter hunger signals from being translated as a need for food. A popular appetite suppressant that has almost created a sensation in the weight world is the Hoodia weight loss pills. Purely herbal in nature with no known side effects, Hoodia is the preferred weight loss pill when one needs to curb excessive hunger – the root cause of weight gain.Hoodia Weight Loss Pills Hoodia weight loss pills are an all natural weight loss supplement derived from the Hoodia Gordonii plant, a rare succulent that grows in the extreme climate of Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Hoodia’s effectiveness as an appetite suppressant was even featured in Oprah Winfrey and the 60 Minutes show. The demand for this gentle and effective weight loss pill has only been soaring since then.The peculiarity of the cactus-like Hoodia Gordonii plant is that it contains what is called an appetite suppressant P57 molecule. The native San Bushmen tribe has for generations been using the unique property of Hoodia Gordonii as a natural appetite suppressant and thirst quencher during their long hunting trips in Kalahari.The active P57 molecule in Hoodia Gordonii targets the hypothalamus region in the brain, which controls the sensation of thirst and hunger. When you eat, the glucose level in your body rises, and the nerve cells in the hypothalamus respond, letting you know that you no longer need to eat. The exciting thing about the P57 molecule is that it copies the effect that glucose has on the brain. The P57 molecule goes to the mid-brain and makes the nerve cells fire as if you were full, causing you to want to eat less.Hoodia Diet Pills In this world where obesity is emerging as the leading cause of mortality, Hoodia diet pills is seen as a miracle supplement that can help you control weight by suppressing appetite. Most other diet pills and products in the market require greater conscious and more intentional efforts to control weight while Hoodia diet pills requires least effort to achieve the desired results. Regular intake of Hoodia diet pills can help you reduce calorie intake by 2000 calories per day. All you need to do is take 1-3 Hoodia diet pills an hour before your meal, three times a day. Combined with regular exercise and a healthy diet, Hoodia diet pills will help you shed unwanted pounds easily. Pure Hoodia diets pills are 100 % natural and have no known side effects.However, excessive popularity of Hoodia Gordonii has generated huge demand for Hoodia diet pills to the extent that a protected status had to be imposed on Hoodia Gordonii plant. There are many fake products in the market claiming to contain pure Hoodia but all these products do not actually contain the active ingredient alleged to suppress appetite. Many companies use the skin, spines etc of the Hoodia plant which does not offer any benefit, but only increases the percentage weight of Hoodia. One needs to know that it is only the ‘heart’ of the Hoodia that has the appetite suppressant P57 molecule. Please make sure that the Hoodia diet pill that you are buying is pure and genuine by carefully checking the label. A pure Hoodia diet pill carries a certificate of analysis, random analysis testing certificate and a certificate by CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of the Worlds Fauna and Wildlife) to ensure legal export of product from South Africa.

60 Minutes Report on Hoodia

hoodia
Ibrahim Machiwala asked:

(CBS) Each year, people spend more than $40 billion on products designed to help them slim down. None of them seem to be working very well.

Now along comes hoodia. Never heard of it? Soon it’ll be tripping off your tongue, because hoodia is a natural substance that literally takes your appetite away.

It’s very different from diet stimulants like Ephedra and Phenfen that are now banned because of dangerous side effects. Hoodia doesn’t stimulate at all. Scientists say it fools the brain by making you think you’re full, even if you’ve eaten just a morsel. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.

“Hoodia, a plant that tricks the brain by making the stomach feel full, has been in the diet of South Africa’s Bushmen for thousands of years.”

Because the only place in the world where hoodia grows wild is in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa.

Nigel Crawhall, a linguist and interpreter, hired an experienced tracker named Toppies Kruiper, a local aboriginal Bushman, to help find it. The Bushmen were featured in the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy.”

Kruiper led 60 Minutes crews out into the desert. Stahl asked him if he ate hoodia. “I really like to eat them when the new rains have come,” says Kruiper, speaking through the interpreter. “Then they’re really quite delicious.”

When we located the plant, Kruiper cut off a stalk that looked like a small spiky pickle, and removed the sharp spines. In the interest of science, Stahl ate it. She described the taste as “a little cucumbery in texture, but not bad.”

So how did it work? Stahl says she had no after effects – no funny taste in her mouth, no queasy stomach, and no racing heart. She also wasn’t hungry all day, even when she would normally have a pang around mealtime. And, she also had no desire to eat or drink the entire day. “I’d have to say it did work,” says Stahl.

Although the West is just discovering hoodia, the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been eating it for a very long time. After all, they have been living off the land in southern Africa for more than 100,000 years.

Some of the Bushmen, like Anna Swartz, still live in old traditional huts, and cook so-called Bush food gathered from the desert the old-fashioned way.

The first scientific investigation of the plant was conducted at South Africa’s national laboratory. Because Bushmen were known to eat hoodia, it was included in a study of indigenous foods.

“What they found was when they fed it to animals, the animals ate it and lost weight,” says Dr. Richard Dixey, who heads an English pharmaceutical company called Phytopharm that is trying to develop weight-loss products based on hoodia.

Was hoodia’s potential application as an appetite suppressant immediately obvious?

“No, it took them a long time. In fact, the original research was done in the mid 1960s,” says Dixey.

It took the South African national laboratory 30 years to isolate and identify the specific appetite-suppressing ingredient in hoodia. When they found it, they applied for a patent and licensed it to Phytopharm.

Phytopharm has spent more than $20 million so far on research, including clinical trials with obese volunteers that have yielded promising results. Subjects given hoodia ended up eating about 1,000 calories a day less than those in the control group. To put that in perspective, the average American man consumes about 2,600 calories a day; a woman about 1,900.

“If you take this compound every day, your wish to eat goes down. And we’ve seen that very, very dramatically,” says Dixey.

But why do you need a patent for a plant? “The patent is on the application of the plant as a weight-loss material. And, of course, the active compounds within the plant. It’s not on the plant itself,” says Dixey.

So no one else can use hoodia for weight loss? “As a weight-management product without infringing the patent, that’s correct,” says Dixey.

But what does that say about all these weight-loss products that claim to have hoodia in it? Trimspa says its X32 pills contain 75 mg of hoodia. The company is pushing its product with an ad campaign featuring Anna Nicole Smith, even though the FDA has notified Trimspa that it hasn’t demonstrated that the product is safe.

Some companies have even used the results of Phytopharm’s clinical tests to market their products.

“This is just straightforward theft. That’s what it is. People are stealing data, which they haven’t done, they’ve got no proper understanding of, and sticking on the bottle,” says Dixey. “When we have assayed these materials, they contain between 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the active ingredient claimed. But they use the term hoodia on the bottle, of course, so they — does nothing at all.”

But Dixey isn’t the only one who’s felt ripped off. The Bushmen first heard the news about the patent when Phytopharm put out a press release. Roger Chennells, a lawyer in South Africa who represents the Bushmen, who are also called “the San,” was appalled.

“The San did not even know about it,” says Chennells. “They had given the information that led directly toward the patent.”

The taking of traditional knowledge without compensation is called “bio-piracy.”

“You have said, and I’m going to quote you, ‘that the San felt as if someone had stolen the family silver,’” says Stahl to Chennells. “So what did you do?”

“I wouldn’t want to go into some of the details as to what kind of letters were written or what kind of threats were made,” says Chennells. “We engaged them. They had done something wrong, and we wanted them to acknowledge it.”

Chennells was determined to help the Bushmen who, he says, have been exploited for centuries. First they were pushed aside by black tribes. Then, when white colonists arrived, they were nearly annihilated.

“About the turn of the century, there were still hunting parties in Namibia and in South Africa that allowed farmers to go and kill Bushmen,” says Chennells. “It’s well documented.”

The Bushmen are still stigmatized in South Africa, and plagued with high unemployment, little education, and lots of alcoholism. And now, it seemed they were about to be cut out of a potential windfall from hoodia. So Chennells threatened to sue the national lab on their behalf.

“We knew that if it was successful, many, many millions of dollars would be coming towards the San,” says Chennells. “Many, many millions. They’ve talked about the market being hundreds and hundreds of millions in America.”

In the end, a settlement was reached. The Bushmen will get a percentage of the profits — if there are profits. But that’s a big if.

The future of hoodia is not yet a sure thing. The project hit a major snag last year. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which had teamed up with Phytopharm, and funded much of the research, dropped out when making a pill out of the active ingredient seemed beyond reach.

Dixey says it can be made synthetically: “We’ve made milligrams of it. But it’s very expensive. It’s not possible to make it synthetically in what’s called a scaleable process. So we couldn’t make a metric ton of it or something that is the sort of quantity you’d need to actually start doing something about obesity in thousands of people.”

Phytopharm decided to market hoodia in its natural form, in diet shakes and bars. That meant it needed the hoodia plant itself.

But given the obesity epidemic in the United States, it became obvious that what was needed was a lot of hoodia – much more than was growing in the wild in the Kalahari. And so they came here.

60 Minutes visited one of Phytopharm’s hoodia plantations in South Africa. They’ll need a lot of these plantations to meet the expected demand.

Agronomist Simon MacWilliam has a tall order: grow a billion portions a year of hoodia, within just a couple of years. He admitted that starting up the plantation has been quite a challenge.

“The problem is we’re dealing with a novel crop. It’s a plant we’ve taken out of the wild and we’re starting to grow it,’ says MacWilliam. “So we have no experience. So it’s different? diseases and pests which we have to deal with.”

How confident are they that they will be able to grow enough? “We’re very confident of that,” he says. “We’ve got an expansion program which is going to be 100s of acres. And we’ll be able – ready to meet the demand.

This could be huge, given the obesity epidemic. Phytopharm says it’s about to announce marketing plans that will have meal-replacement hoodia products on supermarket shelves by 2008.

MacWilliam says these products are a slightly different species from the hoodia Stahl tasted in the Kalahari Desert. “It’s actually a lot more bitter than the plant that you tasted,” says MacWilliam.

The advantage is this species of hoodia will grow a lot faster. But more bitter? How bad could it be? Stahl decided to find out. “Not good,” she says.

Phytopharm says that when its product gets to market, it will be certified safe and effective. They also promise that it’ll taste good.