Can Hoodia Gum Really Be An Effective Appetite Suppressant?

Hoodia gum is one in a line of specialty hoodia products that have hit the market in the past couple years. Other products that have hit the market include hoodia chews and hoodia pops. What all of these specialty products have in common is that they all claim to have the ability to be highly effective and almost instant appetite suppressants. The idea behind these products is that if you can control your appetite, you’ll eat less and you’ll lose weight.

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.

Right now we are experiencing a short supply of hoodia gordonii because there is so much demand for it, and that demand can’t be met. This has resulted in the price of hoodia gordonii skyrocketing. Over the past few years many manufacturers have seen how popular hoodia supplements have become and have jumped on the bandwagon. However, in order to improve their profits they have cut corners, either by diluting their products so they actually contain very little hoodia gordonii, or by not using any at all!

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%!

You can help protect yourself by looking for two important pieces of information to ensure that the product you are buying is really genuine. You should look for CITES certificates and independent lab test results. The companies selling hoodia products should display these documents on their websites. If you cannot find these, then the product on sale is highly likely to be a fake which does not contain authentic hoodia gordonii.

I have researched numerous websites selling hoodia gum and have struggled to find either of these documents displayed. This is the main reason that I doubt the authenticity of their products, even though the websites are marketing them as highly effective appetite suppressants. If you cannot view these documents then the product probably doesn’t contain any hoodia gordonii, and will therefore have absolutely no affect on your hunger or 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.

Some experts and doctors say that it can take as much as 3,000mg of hoodia gordonii per day to effectively suppress appetite. At a minimum, most people need anywhere between 800-1,500mg per day to suppress appetite. Assuming you’re able to get by with 800mg per day to suppress your appetite, you’d still need to chew several sticks of gum with each stick only containing 20-150mg of hoodia gordonii!

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.

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