Hoodia Gordonia

Hoodia P-57

Hoodia gordonia -- more commonly spelled hoodia gordonii -- is an ancient plant that has grown for over a hundred thousand years in the Kalahari desert of Southern Africa.

It's been used for almost that long by the Sans Bushmen, a primitive tribe of hunter-gatherers who discovered that if they eat it their appetite and thirst vanished for awhile.

These appetite and thirst suppressing effects proved very beneficial for the Sans as they embarked on hunting trips during which they had to endure long periods of time without food or water.

Even though the Sans Bushmen have known about the properties of hoodia gordonia for thousands of years, it wasn't until the year 1996 that the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR for short) in South Africa studied this plant and learned that when it was fed to animals, it caused the animals to lose weight.

Eventually, the CSIR isolated the active ingredient in the hoodia plant and called is P-57. That's why nowadays people are searching for Hoodia P-57 ...hoping to get just the active ingredient responsible for its weight loss benefits.

Hoodia P-57

After the CSIR isolated the active ingredient, they licensed the patent rights for P-57 to Phytopharm, a British based pharmaceutical company. A lot of people think of Phizer hoodia (more commonly spelled Pfizer) because they think the well known pharmaceutical giant here in the United States had the patent rights to the active ingredient.

What actually happened was that Pfizer got wind of this interesting active molecule -- that is, P-57 -- and they teamed up with Phytopharm to see if they could turn it into an anti-obesity prescription drug.

However, after conducting research they determined it would be too cost prohibitive to manufacture it into a mass produced drug so they returned the rights to Phytopharm. Phytopharm has seen teamed up with Unilever (the giant company that owns SlimFast products) to release non-prescription products with hoodia gordonia.

But, importantly, hoodia P-57 isn't available currently, unlike what some people believe.

Phytopharm and Unilever are currently conducting more studies on the efficacy and safety for P-57 ...but their products won't be released until 2008 it's estimated.

In the meantime, many other companies continue to sell hoodia gordonia products because it appears that the whole plant itself cannot be patented. Please see our page on the effectiveness of hoodia gordonii for more info on this topic if you want to understand it further.

The bottomline, in our opinion, is if you want to try a hoodia product, make sure you buy only from companies that display hoodia c.i.t.e.s. certificate. This will prove that they are sourcing genuine South African hoodia gordonii so you maximize your chances of getting a real product. There are many fake products floating around the internet and in stores unfortunately.

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