Hoodia Gordonii Weight Loss Patches

If you have been researching Hoodia Gordonii and have read my previous posts, then I would be surprised if you haven't wondered to yourself about how pure Hoodia Gordonii could possibly be delivered via a transdermal patch. The Hoodia plant is eaten raw by the Bushmen in South Africa, and pure Hoodia is grown and dried to a powder to be placed into capsules or diluted into a liquid extract. If you remember from an earlier post, Phytopharm Laboratories isolated and obtained a patent for the active ingredient in Hoodia (P57) that suppresses the appetite, but none of their attempts to manufacture P57 have been successful. In fact, at this time, no pharmaceutical company is pursuing the artificial manufacturing of Hoodia, as it is felt that this would be a low-yield effort and that a manufactured product would never come close to the real plant in efficacy.

I have done some research about the transdermal delivery of medications. After many years of research and experiments, the first medication available for delivery via a skin patch was approved by the FDA in 1980. There are currently approximately 20 medications that have been developed, tested, and approved for delivery by this method. It makes sense that for Hoodia, which was only introduced to the American marketplace in 2004, there has not been enough time to develop a patch to efficiently deliver the stated dose of the medication, much less to test that patch for efficient delivery; the research and development phases of this process takes many years. Therefore, I would have to say with a good amount of certainty that any patch that claims to contain pure Hoodia does not contain much, if any, pure South African Hoodia; and there is no research to show if the active ingredient in Hoodia (P57) is even capable of being absorbed through the skin. We do, however, know that it is absorbed when taken orally.

My next question, obviously, would be: If I'm not getting Hoodia through the patch, then what exactly is being absorbed into my body?