hoodia info

[gfunkusarelius]

is there a thread somewhere on here about hoodia that i am missing? i did a search and found two threads and the one that dealt directly with hoodia basically said it seemed pretty promising and was somehow owned by phizer. after the bazillion spam mails i get, i was expecting to see several long threads on here talking about it (and, being a skeptic, i assumed the consensus to be that it was a scam). are there tests underway? is this actually looking like it is safe?

 

[This Guy]

Might want to read this for some info -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodia

 

[ChristineR]

is there a thread somewhere on here about hoodia that i am missing? i did a search and found two threads and the one that dealt directly with hoodia basically said it seemed pretty promising and was somehow owned by phizer. after the bazillion spam mails i get, i was expecting to see several long threads on here talking about it (and, being a skeptic, i assumed the consensus to be that it was a scam). are there tests underway? is this actually looking like it is safe?

I really don't know that much about it, but I do know this:

The bushmen eat a piece about the size and shape of a cucumber and it apparently does supress their appetite.

Hoodia is a pain to grow. It's a cactus. It's getting scarce in the wild.

Those little pills aren't even 100% Hoodia, so you'd have to take the whole bottle to get the cucumber dose.

None of the pills have any data to support that said pills do anything. They just quote the studies on the cucumber pieces.

No one has yet managed to synthesize the chemical in Hoodia that does its magic.

 

[patnray]

Hoodia is a pain to grow. It's a cactus. It's getting scarce in the wild.

Actually, it's a slow growing succulent that resembles a cactus.

It appears that there is some evidence that one ingredient (P57 or H57) does suppress appetite, although there are no published clinical studies. Specifically, there are no studies establishing the safety or proper dose. Pfizer attempted to develop it but was unable to synthesize P57 economically, so abandoned the effort. Because it is hard to grow, and is a protected species, the plant is expensive and most commercial products contain little P57.

Typically, because there are no proper clinical trials, there is no data on side effects, so companies marketing hoodia extracts can state that there are no known side effects. Phytopharm, which patented P57, claims to have an unpublished DBPC trial that shows it does suppress appetite. But they also claim there were NO reported side effects during their trial. In most trials even the subjects receiving the placebo report some side effects, so this claim seems a little unusual...

 

[gfunkusarelius]

well, based on the info i have received-

either hoodia is not an amazing uberdrug (otherwise phizer would not have given up so easily) or it is an amazing uberdrug that is so effective it would destroy the multi-billion dollar diet/exercise industry (hence phizer abandoned it to throw us all off..or something...i dont know, i'm not good at this CT stuff).

sounds like your pretty standard "it might help a little but really isnt worth our trouble since it might end up hurting more than it helps"

 

[Abdul Alhazred]

I heard it on the radio. It helps you lose weight.

Of course it works.

South African Bushmen use it. Ever seen a fat Bushman?

 

[patnray]

I don't think Pfizer abandoned it because they don't think it works. Pfizer spent 6 years trying to synthesize it. They realized that the plant grows too slowly in too limited an area to rely on extracting P57 from the plant for large scale distribution. Pfizer is too ethical a company to just put put a trace of hoodia in each bottle (unlike many suppliment companies). They walked away because they couldn't guarantee a sufficient supply to create a relaible product on a large enough scale.