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Hoodia Gordonii, known as the ‘Bushman’s Hat’ and ‘Queen of the Namib’, is a flowering plant native to Southern Africa. It belongs to the Apocynaceae family. It grows to a height of a meter and has tan or purple color flowers that have a strong smell. The natives call the plant Khoba, Ghaap and Xhooba. The plant is found in the semi-deserts of South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Angola. It is a plant that is specifically native to the Namib Desert.

The San Bushmen, the indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert, have known about this plant for ages. They have been consuming this for various purposes. When they go for a hunt that will take them days, they suppress their hunger by eating the stem of Hoodia plants. They are known to use the plant to treat such diseases as severe abdominal cramps, hemorrhoids, tuberculosis, indigestion, hypertension and diabetes. About twenty sub-species of Hoodia plant are known to exist. Not all of them suppress appetite. It is the Hoodia Gordonii that has this quality. It takes about five years for the plant to mature and flower.

As early as 1937, a Dutch anthropologist had noted that the San Bushmen consumed Hoodia to suppress appetite. But it was only in 1963 that this was studied were carried out at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the national laboratory of South Africa. The scientists, along with Phytopharm, a British company, isolated a steroidal glycoside, the active ingredient in Hoodia. They named it as p57. Very soon Hoodia began to be sold in liquid and capsule form and marketed extensively through health food stores. It has become popular as Hoodia 57. It is promoted as an effective supplement to lose weight and control obesity. What Hoodia does is to send signals to the brain which makes you feel full and lose appetite. This in turn makes you avoid over eating.

The extensive harvesting of Hoodia has led Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to include it in the list in Appendix II. This means that Hoodia stands the risk of it being declared as an endangered species if its trade is not effectively controlled. It was listed in 2008 by the Botanic Gardens Conservation International as being threatened with extinction due to over-extraction. Hoodia is now cultivated in the government controlled farms in the Kalahari Desert. Royalty is also now shared with the San Bushmen.

Whatever we need, nature, always has something to give. So, we should handle nature with care.

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