Hoodia Gordonii

The popularity of weight loss diet pills has escalated manifold and everyday a new miracle weight loss diet pill enters the market touting to help you lose weight, reduce hunger and get into shape without budging an inch. Most of these claims need thorough scrutinizing as some of them are just cashing in on your ignorance. Whether you are administering these diet and supplementary pills or consuming them, you need to take them under medical advice and monitor their effects.
It is not surprising that an ever-increasing overweight population is searching for some quick and desperate answers to lose weight. The latest entrants into the highly complex supplements market are the hoodia gordonii pills branded by various companies under different names. The hoodia gordonii extract in these pills is touted to act as an appetite suppressant and help consumers lose weight.

Origin

While the research on hoodia gordonii diet pills has polled in mixed results, its origin gives many pharmaceutical companies a reason to carry on. Hoodia gordonii is a prickly cucumber-like plant, which grows wild in the deserts of South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Angola.

The San Bushmen of southern Africa have recognized its medicinal quality for thousands of years. They use its fleshy leaf to cure stomach infections and indigestion. The most miraculous property of the hoodia gordonii plant, though, is its ability to suppress the hunger of the Bushmen on long hunting trips through the Kalahari desert.

This hunger suppressing quality first led to research on the hoodia gordonii plant. Researchers in South Africa succeeded in isolating a chemical compound—p57—from the hoodia gordonii extract—a key ingredient responsible for the appetite suppressing effect. Ongoing research to isolate other active ingredients from the hoodia gordonii extract and synthesizing them for use as an appetite suppressant continues. International interest in the hoodia gordonii plant has placed it in the ‘protected plant’ category. Only licensed individuals and companies can now wild harvest it.

Controversy and Side Effects

There is huge hope that the hoodia gordonii extract is the answer to weight loss, but the line gets blurry when it comes to the refined and packaged capsules sold on the Internet and health food and organic stores. The hoodia gordonii extract is available in the form of capsules, tablets, powders, hoodia enhanced shakes, diet bars, and even hoodia enhanced lollipops.

The worry is that almost half the weight loss diet pills claiming to contain the hoodia gordonii extract are fake. Some of the products claiming to possess hoodia gordonii extracts were tested. It was shockingly found that there is either very little of the active ingredient or none at all. The prices of these pills have also escalated with their increasing demand. The high prices and the neat profit you can pocket are another incentive for people to cheat and sell counterfeit products. Since many of these so-called hoodia gordonii diet pills are available as over-the-counter pills, very often, there is no proper recommendation of its dosage or side effects.

Since minimal research has been conducted on this miracle weight loss diet pills, weight watchers’ turning to hoodia gordonii need to be cautious about what they are buying and from where. While researchers are still guarded about hoodia gordonii merits, they are cautioning consumers about the possible harmful effects to the liver by active ingredients, which could not be easily isolated from the p57 supplement.

Apart from liver function, hoodia gordonii side effects may also include dehydration, as the pill suppresses not only hunger but also thirst.

While the San Bushmen from southern Africa claim that the hoodia extracts are safe, you have to keep in mind that these tribesmen ate the organically found plant, not refined capsules or pills. Secondly, the modern day consumption of this pill is fraught with dangers, since you maybe consuming medication for other ailments. Hoodia gordonii pills have not been studied in conjunction with other ailments or medication and therefore must be consumed cautiously.

Since the effect of hoodia gordonii pills have not been studied in humans, pregnant or nursing women, children, individuals suffering from other ailments like heart diseases, diabetes, blood pressure, liver and kidney diseases and so on should avoid it.

Submitted on January 16, 2014