The most prominent idea of health preservation in Confucianism is the "golden mean", which emphasizes that people should conform to nature and not change things easily, while Taoism is different. Taoism can be said to be the origin of traditional Chinese medicine, and the emergence of traditional Chinese medicine can not be separated from Taoism. Taoism will pay attention to the five elements of yin and yang and the principle of mutual restraint, which will make people pay attention to the internal organs of the body and have corresponding treatment methods to make people healthier.

Taoism has a great relationship with Chinese medicine. The ancestor of Taoism is Huangdi, and TCM has a medical classic Huangdi Neijing, which proves that Taoism is related to TCM. There are three kinds of TCM treatments: prescription, acupuncture and wishing. Nowadays, the method of wishing by has been lost, and only prescription and acupuncture are still used. There are some folk Taoist priests who can express their wishes, but there are only a handful.

The doctrine of the mean is the norm of Confucian thought and behavior. The so-called "golden mean" requires people to be impartial and "allow" their actions and things; Ceremony is the standard to measure too much or too little, meaning "ceremony". The so-called "overwork, excessive rest, death" in the five instruments of Confucius' Notes is the concrete expression of the concept of the golden mean in health care, which has great influence.

The most direct relationship between Taoism and medicine is the expression of the five elements of Taoism in medicine. In medicine, the five zang-organs and the five elements theory of Taoism are homologous. If we want to use the five elements in medicine, we must understand their representation in the human body. For example, gold represents lung and large intestine in human body and nose and skin in vitro.

During the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, Chinese medicine gradually incorporated some health-preserving means of Taoism, such as massage and pranayama, and Taoist alchemy entered the field of pharmacy, while Taoist medical classics enriched the theory and medical means of Chinese medicine, such as A Brief Introduction to the Golden Chamber by Ge Hong in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Notes on Materia Medica by Tao Hongjing in Nanliang, and Qian Jin Fang Yao by Sun Simiao, a drug king in the Tang Dynasty.