Nowadays, more and more attentions have been paid to the healthy diet. In Japan, eating is regarded as a way to improve the blood circulation and accelerate the metabolism. It has been a symbol of high quality and high end to add gold into foods and drinks. Some people even think that eating gold can remove bad luck and bring in wealth and treasure. The trend of eating gold has been introduced to various regions in the world from Japan. At present, gold is even added into coffee, wine, tea and cooked rice. However, because of high price, only few people can eat gold.

According to the modern medicine, pure gold can be used to treat various diseases. For example, gold can be used to make the materials of filling teeth and acupuncture and moxibustion. Gold is a kind of stable substance, and it is hard for gold to react with many other substances. Gold can also be used to treat asthma, improve constipation, eliminate the pain of the human body and blacken the hair. However, many effects of gold have not been verified by the medical research. The patients with the diseases above can not depend on gold absolutely.

Gold has been used in medical area for hundreds of years. The traditional Chinese medicine has regarded gold as one kind of medical drug. It was very difficult to eat gold in ancient times. At first, people must put a small part of gold between two thick papers. Then they beat the gold into a thin piece of gold foil to eat. Nowadays, people can make use of modern machines to transform gold into gold powder or liquid gold foil. Some people are afraid of heavy metal poisoning caused by eating gold. In fact, according to the traditional Chinese medicine, gold can be divided into raw gold and ripe gold. Raw gold stands for the gold which is not smelted for many times. Raw gold is toxic, as many impure materials are not removed from raw gold. Therefore, raw gold can not be added into medical drugs. According to the modern science, if the purity of gold reaches 90%, the gold can be eaten. The lower the purity of gold is, the more the compositions of heavy metal including lead and copper contained in gold are.

Although gold has been used to treat various diseases and beautify the skin for people, the medical effects of gold should be further conformed by the modern science.