The effects of hoodia gordonii are astounding.

You've probably heard it a hundred times by now: the hoodia diet pill can help you lose weight by lowering your appetite.

Anyone who watches and news at all has undoubtedly heard about the hoodia gordonii diet on either CBS, Oprah, the Today Show, the BBC, or from the Internet.

But, let's face it, every few years a new weight loss supplement hits the market promising the world. So, what are the effects of hoodia gordonii that makes it truly different from everything else you've tried or heard about in the last several years?

Well, to uncover the truth on that, we'll need to go over some brief history of the amazing hoodia gordonii plant that has been a long held secret of the Sans Bushmen tribe of South Africa for thousands of years.

The Roots of the Hoodia Diet

The Sans Bushmen are an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers who have resided in the Kalahari Desert located in Southern Africa for a known 100,000 years.

Almost as long as they have roamed the Desert, they discovered that by eating the core of the hoodia gordonii plant, which grows natively there, they experienced a dramatic reduction in their appetite and thirst.

The hoodia diet, so to speak, became crucial for their survival most likely because they would often endure long periods of time while hunting when they had no food or water.

Hunting is a survival skill that requires patience and accuracy, things that become much more difficult if one is experiencing strong hunger and thirst pangs.

Modern Hoodia Diet Discovery

The hoodia gordonii plant's amazing properties were known exclusively to the Sans Bushmen for thousands of years.

In the mid 1990's, however, when the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was doing a study on indigenous plants that make up the Sans Bushmen diet, they discovered that hoodia gordonii had an amazing property: it reduced the amount animals would eat after they ate hoodia.

The hoodia diet is now known as the Sans Bushmen diet because the discovery is now credited to them for originally discovering its properties.

After more time passed, the CSIR managed to isolate the active ingredient in hoodia gordonii that is responsible for its appetite suppressing effects. This active ingredient was labelled P57.

The Hoodia Media Deluge

The media, always hungry for an interesting story, caught wind of the hoodia plant's amazing properties. Being that obesity is such a huge problem in the Western world, major media sources began doing stories on the hoodia diet, complete with news correspondents travelling all the way over to South Africa in person to sample the hoodia gordonii plant firsthand.

One BBC correspondent and one correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes tried the plant themselves, and they both marvelled at how well it worked.

Well, as you can imagine, after these reports of the effects of hoodia gordonii hit TV and print, a hoodia frenzy developed and hoodia diet pill products began popping up like dandelions after a spring shower.

The good thing is that hoodia gordonii is no longer a secret and potentially millions of overweight people may finally realize their weight loss dreams.

On the negative side, numerous fraudulent hoodia products have flooded the market to capitalize on the hoodia craze because genuine hoodia gordonii is rare and hard to export out of South Africa.

In conclusion, the key for any consumer now who wishes to try a hoodia gordonii diet pill product is to arm themselves with the proper knowledge to minimize their chances of buying a subpar or fraudulent hoodia supplement.