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What you need to know about hoodia gordonii.
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From Cathy Wong, N.D.,
Your Guide to Alternative Medicine.
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Learn the differences in strength and potency claims.
If
you've looked online for hoodia, you've probably seen it all: 100%
pure hoodia, 20:1 hoodia extract, hoodia concentrate. Knowing the 3
ways of making hoodia will help you understand the various claims:
a) Making a powder out of the whole hoodia plant -- these are
the products that say their hoodia product is "100% pure". The whole
hoodia plant is ground into a powder. They claim that Bushmen ate
the whole hoodia plant, and argue it's therefore the most effective
way. However, Bushmen actually peel away the hoodia skin and discard
it, they don't actually eat the entire hoodia plant. This is the
cheapest type of hoodia to manufacture.
b) Using alcohol to concentrate it -- these are the 20:1 or
10:1 extracts. The idea here is that there is other stuff in hoodia,
like the fiber and skin, that just takes up room in the capsule. So
the hoodia plant is placed in alcohol, which "pulls out" the active
ingredients into the alcohol. This mixture is then strained to
remove the fiber and skins. The alcohol is removed, leaving the
hoodia powder.
20:1 means that 1g of this extract was made by using 20g of the
whole plant. It's considered more potent than the powdered whole
plant (type a). Source Naturals and Flora are two established
companies that use a 20:1 extract. Paradise Herbs uses a 10:1
extract for their hoodia, meaning that 10g of the whole plant were
used to make 1g of their extract.
c) Using a method to specially extract the p57 molecule --
only Phytopharm and its partners can do this because of the p57
patent. People often ask, "if the p57 molecule is patented, why are
there so many hoodia products sold on the market?"
Phillip Jones, in his "Overview of United States Patent Law", says
"…a naturally occurring molecule cannot be patented even if the
patent applicant was the first to discover the existence of the
molecule. On the other hand, a purified, isolated or altered form of
a naturally occurring molecule may be patentable."
Because p57 naturally occurs in the hoodia plant, there is
presumably some of it in the other two ways of making hoodia (type a
and b). But according to Jones' description, only Phytopharm and its
partners can use methods to specifically extract p57 from hoodia or
make hoodia pills.
References:
Jones, Phillip. Overview of United States Patent Law
http://www2.ari.net/foley/patentov.html
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