Hoodia Gordonii Weight Loss Pill

Hoodia cactus is causing a stir for its ability to suppress appetite, thus promoting weight loss. ABC, Sixty Minutes, and the BBC have all done stories on the hoodia gordonii weight loss pill. Hoodia is sold in capsule, liquid, and tea forms, and is avalable in health stores and on the web. In animal studies, Hoodia was shown to reduce caloric intake by 30% to 50%, and a human study shows a reduced intake of about 1000 calories per day. However, the study was not published as it was an efficiency report (that is, meant to determine if hoodia could do what it said it could, but not posted to a scientific peer review paper).

 It took the South African national laboratory 30 years to isolate and identify the specific appetite-suppressing ingredient in hoodia. They found that hoodia helps shut down the hunger mechanism by tricking the hypothalamus into thinking that there is enough blood sugar. As per researchers at Brown University in Rhode Island, steroidal glycosides in hoodia affect the nerve cells that monitor blood glucose.

When they found it, they applied for a patent and licensed it to Phytopharm. The biggest problem is that creating a synthetic version of the molecule P57, which is the active ingredient of hoodia, is that it is currently an incredibly expensive process, and so Phytopharm is required to rely on the natural hoodia itself. However, demand is much greater than supply.

Pfizer had originally paid Phytopharm for the rights to market a P57 based diet pill. After a few years of unsuccessful attempts to make P57 synthetically, Pfizer pulled out of the deal; if a large amount of P57 could not be created inexpensively in the lab, Pfizer was not interested, and was replaced by Unilever, which is having problems establishing a foothold in the supplements field. Unilever products will not reach the market until 2008.

Thus, hoodia pills contain actual hoodia in them. Pills with at least 400 mg of hoodia tend to have the best effect, but pills with 750 mg are available. The one major problem with hoodia as it stands now is its taste, a bitterness which has followed it into the pills. Phytopharm says that when the pill including the synthetic P57 finally gets to market, it will be certified safe and effective. They also promise that it'll taste good.