Looking for answers about hoodia, the all natural gordonii cactus appetite suppressant? You are in the right place!

For thousands of years, the San Bushmen of the Kalahari desert chewed on the stems of hoodia gordonii cactus plants that they learned would keep them from getting hungry or thirsty when they went off on long hunts.

In the mid 1960’s, South African researchers discovered this variety of cactus that is native to South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Angola contains a previously unknown molecule that has been dubbed P57. This molecule is the agent that works as a powerful appetite suppressant.

Dr. Richard Dixey of the Phytopharm research team said the P57 molecule in hoodia affects the hypothalamus, an organ that contains the nerve cells that sense glucose sugar. Blood sugar goes up when you eat and these cells start emitting impulses that make you feel full. The hoodia molecule appears to be about 10,000 times more active than glucose. It goes to the hypothalamus and makes those nerve cells fire. You will feel full even if you haven’t eaten! Phytopharm performed the first animal trials on rats (chosen because they will eat almost anything). When fed hoodia, they stopped eating completely.

When the first human clinical trial was conducted, a group of extremely overweight volunteers were placed in a controlled environment. Half were given hoodia and the other half a placebo. Fifteen days later the hoodia group had reduced their caloric intake by 1000 calories a day and suffered no ill effects while the group that did not receive hoodia showed no improvement.

BBC News correspondent Tom Mangold went to the Kalahari Desert to sample hoodia for himself. In the report he filed for his network, Mangold said "The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I have to say, we felt good (after eating it). But more significantly, we did not even think about food. Our brains really were telling us we were full. Dinner time came and went. We reached our hotel at about midnight and went to bed without food. And the next day, neither of us wanted nor ate breakfast. I ate lunch but without appetite and very little pleasure. Partial then full appetite returned slowly after 24 hours.