Herbal ephedra and hoodia are two of the more popular and effective weight loss supplements. Of course you will find people that say these herbs are not good at helping people to lose weight. But there is one simple way to determine if they are any good.

Do people continue to search for these diet supplements and continue to take them? Millions of people took billions of doses of ephedra diet pills for over ten years. This type of market power showed that for many people herbal ephedra worked to help them lose fat. If the products had not worked so well then it would have not been popular for so many years.

Ephedra was never used for fat loss until it was discovered less than 20 years ago to "trick" the body into burning fat for fuel. This article is too short for the details of how this works but it has to do with chemical messengers within the ephedra plant.

These fat burning messengers come from the chemicals ephedrine and pseudoephedrine found in the ephedra plant. The strongest and most powerful of these chemicals is ephedrine. When used in high enough concentration over a long enough period of time the body will burn off more fat for fuel than it normally does. When combined with caffeine the fat burning effect is even greater.

Hoodia works by telling the brain you are full regardless of whether you have eaten or not. There are no known harmful side effects associated with taking hoodia gordonii for weight loss.

Using these two herbs together makes a good fat loss plan because they work by different methods. Reduce calorie intake with hoodia and increase calorie expenditure with ephedra.

A comparison really cannot be made between patented weight loss drugs manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry and an all-natural herb that cost less than half the price of a prescription. Plus the fact that in numerous, well qualified, scientific studies it was proven that ephedra caused just as much weight loss, if not more, than prescription weight loss pills.

People will always look for a fast fix for weight loss or simply want to utilize diet pills to help speed the process up. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach as long as you do not abuse the supplements or rely on them completely for your weight loss.

Good nutritional habits and some type of exercise are the best and most reliable ways to lose weight.