Does Hoodia Gum Really Work?

Over the past few years the dieting world has been shook up by the introduction of a number of speciality hoodia products, such as hoodia gum, hoodia chews, and hoodia pops. All of these products claim to be able to effectively and almost instantly suppress your appetite. Therefore helping you to lose weight because by controlling your appetite you will eat less.

While that sounds fantastic, I doubt these products have any affect on appetite and do very little for weight loss. For starters, I doubt that any of the hoodia gum products contain authentic hoodia gordonii. The hoodia gordonii plant is found only in South Africa and contains a molecule called P57. This molecule is the active ingredient in the hoodia plant that tricks the brain into thinking you are full. There are several varieties of hoodia, but only the hoodia gordonii variety has the ability to suppress appetite.

Hoodia gordonii is very scarce right now and there simply isn’t enough to meet demand. As a result, it is very expensive. Hoodia supplements and products have been very popular the past few years so many companies have jumped on the bandwagon. You have everything from hoodia gum to hoodia tea available today. Unfortunately, many companies have tried to cut corners to reap the profits of this high demand herb by either diluting their products so there is very little hoodia gordonii in them, or simply not using any at all ? but still claiming their product contains it.

Companies should not be allowed to get away with this, but they can because there is no regulation for hoodia supplements or products. It’s all down to the consumer to make sure that they know enough of the facts to make sure they do not get scammed or tricked into buying phoney products. Sadly, it’s true that most of the products out there are fake, most don’t contain any hoodia gordonii and those that do contain only very small amounts. Experts have stated that the percentage of fake hoodia products that are actually on sale could in excess of 80%!

There are several things you can look for when buying hoodia gum and other hoodia products to ensure that what you are buying is real, but the two most important are CITES certificates and independent lab test results. You’ll find these documents on websites that sell and market hoodia gums and other hoodia supplements. If you can’t find them, then it is very likely the product doesn’t contain authentic hoodia gordonii.

You will be hard pressed to find these documents on any hoodia gum website. I have researched many hoodia gum websites and have yet to find both of them clearly displayed. This is the primary reason why I doubt that any hoodia gum product can be a “powerful and fast-acting appetite suppressant” as many claim to be. If you can’t find these documents, then the product probably doesn’t contain authentic hoodia gordonii and as a result, has virtually no ability to effectively suppress appetite.

However, let’s assume that these hoodia gum products contain authentic hoodia gordonii. I still believe they would be highly ineffective when it comes to suppressing appetite because they contain very little hoodia gordonii. Hoodia gum products typically claim to have anywhere from 20-150mg of it per stick of gum. That isn’t going to be nearly enough to effectively suppress appetite.

It is argued by doctors and slimming experts that it can take a dosage of about 3,000mg of hoodia per day before a person will experience effective appetite suppression. However, some people may be able to manage on a much lower dose of around 800 to 1,500mg. This would still mean that you would have to chew several sticks of hoodia gum before you received this dose.

One final concern I have about all of these hoodia gum products is that the majority of them state that they were made using concentrates or extracts from the hoodia gordonii plant, and that these concentrates only contained the active ingredient P57. The problem with this is that the process of extracting this molecule has not yet been fine tuned and there is only one company in the world, called Phytopharm, who have the legal rights to do this.

This is a British medical company who are the exclusive holders of the patent for extracting the P57 molecule from the hoodia gordonii plant. However, even though they have spent the last several years and millions of pounds on researching this process, they have so far not been able to come up with a way to effectively extract P57 for use in weight loss products. I don’t see how these hoodia gum products can claim to be based on hoodia gordonii extract, when the process of creating that extract hasn’t even been properly developed.

The bottom line is I doubt that any of these hoodia gum products contain authentic hoodia gordonii, which is necessary to effectively suppress appetite. Furthermore, even if they do, they contain so little of it that it would probably do very little to suppress your appetite. If you are serious about trying hoodia supplements to suppress appetite, I strongly suggest you stick with traditional hoodia diet pills.