The Truth About Hoodia

Hoodia plant
Hoodia is a desert cactus plant, native to South Africa's Kalahari desert region. One species of Hoodia "hoodia gordonii" is being investigated for use as an appetite suppressant. This natural plant, which tricks the brain by making the stomach feel full, has been in the diet of South Africa's Bushmen for thousands of years. In 1977, the South African Council for Scientific Research isolated the ingredient in hoodia - now known as P57 - which is responsible for its appetite-suppressant effect, and patented it in 1996. They then granted United Kingdom-based Phytopharm a pharmaceutical company with a plant extract division) a license, and they collaborated with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to isolate active ingredients from the extracts and look into synthesizing them for use as an appetite suppressant. However the big pharmaceutical companies ran into major difficulties while trying to synthesize the active ingredient to be marketed in pill form. According to an interview for the CBS program 60 minutes "We've made milligrams of it. But it's very expensive. It's not possible to make it synthetically in what's called a scalable 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." Today that means that Hoodia can only be produced by growing Hoodia plants then extracting the natural ingredients.

Hoodia as an appetite suppressant it actually work?
Well, research carried out by Phytopharm shows that a group of 18 morbidly obese volunteers cut the number of calories they consumed by as much as 1000 calories per day after taking the hoodia extract for two weeks - on average reducing calorie intake by 1000 per day would mean for most people a weight loss of approximately 2lbs per week! According to BBC reporter Tom Mangold "At about 6.00pm I ate about half a banana size - and later so did my cameraman. Soon after, we began the four hour drive back to Capetown."
"The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I have to say, we felt good. But more significantly, we did not even think about food. Our brains really were telling us we were full. It was a magnificent deception." "Dinner time came and went. We reached our hotel at about midnight and went to bed without food. And the next day, neither of us wanted nor ate breakfast. I ate lunch but without appetite and very little pleasure. Partial then full appetite returned slowly after 24 hours." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/2947810.stm.

How does hoodia suppress appetite?
According to Phytopharm chief Dr Richard Dixey, P57 targets the satiety centre in the brain, known as the hypothalamus. "There is a part of your brain, the hypothalamus," says Doctor Dixey. "Within that mid-brain there are nerve cells that sense glucose sugar. When you eat, blood sugar goes up because of the food, these cells start firing and now you are full. What the Hoodia seems to contain is a molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as glucose. It goes to the mid-brain and actually makes those nerve cells fire as if you were full. But you have not eaten. Nor do you want to."

Hoodia side effects
The only hoodia problems seem to lie in the fact that clinical research has not been completed at this time. There is no known hoodia dangers, no unwanted side effects have yet been reported, but subsequent phases of clinical research by Phytopharm and the FDA may yet include warnings about possible interactions with drugs or other health issues. The main problems, potentially, could come from long-term use. There is no history of hoodia problems among the San people of southern Africa. They are the people that originally brought hoodia gordonii to the attention of scientists studying this plant in South Africa. As a people they have been eating the plant for thousands of years, although it was not a staple food, so they did not eat it often. This raises concerns about hoodia problems that could arise from long-term use as an appetite suppressant by the morbidly obese.

In summing up, taking extract of hoodia gordonii orally does seem to have a profound effect on appetite and does not seem to have any unwelcome side effects. However all the evidence is "anecdotal" - there has been one successful study carried out by Phytopharm but it was too small in scale to be considered a clinical trial - many industry experts are cautioning against long term use until more research has been carried out. Additionally Hoodia only seems to suppress genuine hunger pangs, so if you are a "comfort eater" and overeat mainly due to anxiety, loneliness or depression then hoodia will most likely have little if any impact on your eating patterns.