How it Works

Hoodia gordonii is also called hoodia, khoba, xhooba, South African desert cactus, hoodia cactus, and Ghaap. The hoodia gordonii cactus is a grate appetite suppressant and promotes tremendous weight loss. The BBC, ABC, and 60 Minutes have all done stories on hoodia gordonii.

Hoodia gordonii grows in the semi-deserts of Namibia, Angola, South Africa, and Botswana. Hoodia grows in clumps of green upright stems and is actually a succulent, not a cactus.

It takes about 5 years before hoodia's pale purple flowers appear and the cactus (or succulent to be precise) can be gathered. Although there are more than 20 types of hoodia, but only the hoodia gordonii variety is believed to contain the natural appetite suppressant.

San Bushmen of the Kalahari desert have been eating it for a centuries but for us hoodia was "discovered" relatively recently. The Bushmen used hoodia for severe abdominal spasms, hemorrhoids, diabetes, indigestion, hypertension and tuberculosis. They would cut off part of the hoodia stem and eat it to ward off hunger and thirst during nomadic hunting trips.

In 1937, a Dutch traveller studying the San Bushmen noticed that they used hoodia to quell appetite. But it wasn't until 1963 when scientists at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa's national laboratory, began studying hoodia gordonii. The results were promising -- lab animals began to lose weight after taking hoodia.

The South African scientists, working with a British company Phytopharm, isolated the active component in hoodia gordonii, a steroidal glycoside, which was named p57. On getting a patent in 1995, they licensed p57 to Phytopharm. Phytopharm has spent more than $20 million on hoodia gordonii research.