A recent study of overweight Americans has revealed some alarming statistics... according to the National Center for Health:

Between 1962 and the year 2000, the number of overweight Americans grew from 13% to an ALARMING 31% of the population... here’s a small example of what has happened over the last 40 years...

·        63% of Americans are overweight with a Body Mass Index (BMI) in excess of 25.0.

·        31% are very overweight with a BMI in excess of 30.0.

·        Childhood obesity in the United States has more than tripled in the past two decades.

·        According to the U.S. Surgeon General report obesity is responsible for 300,000 deaths every year.

Scientists have been searching for YEARS for an answer to America’s growing obesity problem...

And a piece of the puzzle may have been found in the root of Hoodia gordonii ... a cactus-like plant that grows in the Kalahari Desert region of South Africa.

You may have heard the term Hoodia before... as it has been in the news recently... as CBS correspondent, Lesley Stahl reported on the substance for 60 Minutes.

Many questions arise with the subject of body image and weight gain...

One of which... what is the difference between overweight and VERY overweight??

The skinny on FAT: How to
know WHERE you stand?

In the past... to be considered “morbidly overweight”... individuals had to be at least 20 percent over their ideal weight when factors such as: height, sex, age, and build... were taken into effect.

That view has changed...

Now... to be considered VERY overweight... a body much reach a BMI index of 30 and overweight anything over 25 BMI.

Your bodies BMI... or Body Mass Index is an equation that measures weight in relation to height... it basically equals out too...

WEIGHT(in kilograms) divided by HEIGHT(in meters) squared or for you math nuts out there: W/H2.

But not EVERYBODY falls between these two categories...

There are MANY of us who would just like to lose a couple of extra pounds...

And Hoodia can help us with our own PERSONAL battle of the bulge.

Well... how does it work?

The study of the Hoodia gordonii all stems from an expedition to the Kalahari Desert by a Dutch anthropologist...

During his study of local bushmen... the anthropologist observed them as they both harvested and ate the root of the cactus-like plant.

The locals called it Xhoba(Za-bah)... and explained to their observer that by eating the root of the plant to they were able to stave off hunger and thirst on their LONG hunting expeditions out in the bush.

But it wasn’t until the early 1960’s that scientists began to experiment with the plant to find out what was the active ingredient...

The researchers broke down the chemical make up of the plant and found that what made the root POTENT... was a molecule called P57.

Scientists say that P57 works similar to glucose... by tricking the brain into thinking you’re stomach is full even if you have not eaten!

Research also supports claims that P57 can aid in the reduction of the interest in food and by delaying the time before a body can get hungry again!

This is VERY good news for people that need help in both keeping their hunger in check... and in breaking that food addiction that we sometimes acquire!

This may not be the answer some researchers were hoping for... but the most important information to take away from this piece is this...

Hoodia can help those of us that need that little bit of help to get us over the weight loss hump... and it may not be THE answer...

But hoodia IS another piece to the healthy living lifestyle puzzle.