The Record of Nourishing Nature and Prolonging Life is a great summary of health preservation in the history of Taoism, which shows that Taoist scholars attach great importance to longevity. Although this book is a compilation, there is no lack of Tao Hongjing's health preserving thoughts. For example, Tao Hongjing emphasized in Preface to Prolonging Life: "A husband is full of gas, and only people are valuable. People value more than life. The foundation of the living God, the image of God. God's great use will exhaust him, and his great work will kill him. If you can swim with peace of mind, sit back and relax, serve the vitality of your children, guide yourself to the leisure room when you are young, take care of yourself and bait the medicine, then being 100 years old is a constant score. " This is better than Ge Hong's Bao Puzi.

Some scholars commented on Tao Hongjing's Records of Health Preservation, saying: "Compared with Ge Hong's Taiping Jing and Bao Puzi, although both of them are aimed at pursuing immortality, Tao Hongjing draws a conclusion based on experiments, emphasizing life extension, health and quality of life, and focusing on summarizing and exploring practical health preservation methods. Therefore, his Record of Nourishing and Prolonging Life rarely mentions the theory of soaring in the daytime, but attaches great importance to people's autonomy in controlling their own lives, which is also an important feature of his Taoism. He systematically sorted out and expounded many techniques to prolong life in the Record of Nourishing Life, and put forward the principle of "having both form and spirit", which really hit the nail on the head and was very incisive.