Hoodia Reviews: What You Should Know Before Choosing a Hoodia Product

Hoodia reviews on the Internet are a dime a dozen. Everybody has their opinion when it comes to hoodia product reviews, and we're guilty of this as well. That's why it's important to step back from biased opinions, and take a look at some more general guidelines to minimize your chances of buying a lousy product and maximize your chances of getting a quality one. In addition to these general guidelines, you should understand some hoodia facts that will also help prevent you from getting scammed. Hoodia facts: 1. There are over a dozen types of hoodia plant, but only the hoodia gordonii species contains the appetite suppressing effects everyone is looking for. What this means is that you should beware of any hoodia review touting a product just because it says "100% pure hoodia" on the label. You may be paying for something that's not hoodia gordonii and therefore being ripped off (while not being technically lied to). 2. International trade laws regulate hoodia gordonii and something called a hoodia CITES certificate is needed to export hoodia out of South Africa, the only place where it natively grows. This means you should look for a CITES certificate display on the websites of hoodia product sellers if you want the real thing. Hoodia and Reviews Also, when looking at hoodia product reviews, make sure you don't just focus on the amount of hoodia stated on the label. Here's why.... Many products are made from the whole hoodia plant. However, up to 40% of the plant is useless for medicinal purposes. In short, the hoodia gordonii plant has skin, fibrous material, flowers, leaves, etc., that do not contain any of the active ingredient that aids in weight loss. Therefore, if you are buying a product made from the "whole hoodia plant" you may be paying for as much as 40% useless fillers. Some companies, on the other hand, will produce products from a concentration. What they do is take the plant and place it into alcohol. When the alcohol is removed it helps to remove a lot of these useless fillers with it, leaving more of the good stuff. The good stuff being the material from the core of the plant, which is where the active ingredient is. The Sans Bushmen, the primitive tribe that first discovered and has used hoodia gordonii for thousands of years, also do not consume these fillers. They cut off a piece of the stalk, skin it, and eat the core. Some hoodia reviews you'll read will tell you about the concentration being used in the products. For example, if you see 10:1 mentioned in the review or on the product label, this means that 10 grams of the whole plant was used to make 1 gram of the hoodia gordonii powder which goes into the pills and capsules. If you think about this, you can see why sometimes buying a hoodia 500mg product can be better than buying a 1000mg hoodia product of another brand if the first is concentrated and the second is produced from the whole plant, and stuffed with fillers. The last thing to keep in mind when reading hoodia product reviews is that many of these products also use metabolic boosters in them that have stimulant properties. This is not necessarily a bad thing because hoodia itself does not speed up your metabolism. It works by causing you to not feel hunger, thus potentially reducing how much you eat. However, some product manufacturers believe that adding stimulants that also help increase your metabolic rate would augment the effectiveness of the product, giving it even more weight loss and fat loss punch. However, if you do not react well to stimulants like caffeine, then it's probably best to avoid any hoodia reviews for products that contain stimulants and stick to ones that are just pure hoodia gordonii, which current research seems to show does not stimulate negatively.