Hoodia Gordonii Tricks the Body to Lose Weight

By Robert Scheer

The name Hoodia Gordonii seems to be on the label of just about every weight loss product one picks up these days. There has been so much hype and marketing frenzy about Hoodia diet supplements that it would be best for wise consumers first to do some research prior to purchasing any weight loss or diet product.

Before succumbing to the pressures of advertising or media hype and rushing out to buy Hoodia, it should be known how this weight loss product actually functions in the area of helping people to lose weight.

Hoodia Gordonii is a plant that, when eaten, make the consumer less physically hungry. This is because it mimics a natural function of the human body. After someone eats a full meal, the food is turned into glucose. When the glucose level in the blood increases to a certain point, a receptor in the brain tells the body that it is full.

Scientists have discovered that Hoodia Gordonii contains a molecule, called P57 that is thousands of times more powerful than glucose in triggering the "fullness sensor" in the brain. Even if the stomach is empty, eating Hoodia Gordonii "tricks" the brain into thinking that the stomach is full. This is how Hoodia switches off a person's desire for food. When a person loses the craving to fill his or her stomach, then he or she is more able to make less emotional and more rational, healthy choices about eating.

This seemingly magical plant was unknown to western science until very recently. In the 1990s, a scientific council was doing research in Africa on what plants were consumed by the San Bushmen who live in the Kalahari Desert. These natives, who live in an area where both food and water can be very scarce, learned over many generations that if they consumed a certain cactus-like plant, they could go for long periods of time and not crave food or water. When scientists studied this plan, named Hoodia Gordonii, then observed that laboratory animals that were given the plant were losing weight.

Later, when another research study was done on humans who were categorized as morbidly obese, Hoodia Gordonii, after only two weeks of treatment, was seen to make these individuals voluntarily lower their daily food consumption by 1,000 calories.

It was a British pharmaceutical company, Phytopharm, who researched and isolated the P57 molecule, and who now are working with the Uni-lever corporation to establish plantations in South Africa for growing Hoodia Gordonii plants.