I've got no 'personally personal' physical experience, but I do know two people that used it...with ultimately extremely negative results. And I did look into it fairly deeply.
One was my now deceased m-i-l, who had a HUGE upswing initially (but just like the naysayers indicated), after a few months she had a physical decline (accompanied by a vast decline in "mentation"). Of course, at her age, there were a lot of variables, but this one certainly seemed to be "according to the schedule" of those who indicate it's extremely harmful.
Another person I know experienced the onset of fairly extreme
Depression & brain-fog after a few months. Again, too many variable to solidly conclude anything...but no matter what she tried she couldn't get any relief until she stopped using it. And even then, it was a VERY slow improvement (and she's not over it yet)...but swears it was the 'gold powder'
I read Gardner's book and other assorted information and back in the days when I was messing with 'supplements', I was fairly convinced it was a good thing...and that it was "the manna sent from heaven" and the other "Moses/bible" stuff. That was before I did more researched and learned (what I feel) is the truth about Gardner. I don't know enough to know what to conclude (or it really matters at all) about the various "reptilian info", but the more I read the various accusations, the more disconcerted I became, until I went back and re-read parts of the book. And wow, I was immediately aware of all the "spin-psychology-tactics" in his writing style that I'd been to 'excited about what he was saying' to discern in the first reading.
I would NEVER ingest it, and I would try with all my might to stop anyone I know from ingesting it.
When a substance is this hotly debated and we're dealing with the possibilities of the severity of damage that many suggest (especially pineal damage)...and the substance is something no one has ANY problem living without - then I'm definitely in the "why in the world take that kind of a risk?!" category.
Healthiest of blessings,
Unyquity
Here's a link (with more links) and lots of information for consideration -
http://www.educate-yourself.org/cn/monoatomicgoldthinktwice15aug05.shtml
For what it's worth, I agree with this (from the link above - also the information in one of the links regarding
Colloidal Gold )
On a purely physical level, ingesting gold in any form, is not a good idea. Gold is one of those metals that serve NO METABOLIC requirement for the human body and is therefore not needed by the body. . The body uses certain metals as part of enzyme molecules, of course, and everyone knows that iron is found in the hemoglobin molecule, etc., but there are many metals that can be harmful to the body such as gold, cadmium, lead, mercury, etc., even in very small amounts .
If you read the books of Dr
Hulda Clark , you will learn that gold in the body ENABLES many disease organisms such as salmonella (food poisoning) and PRIONS (mad cow disease) to flourish. No gold = no salmonella or prions!