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Adopting a healthy lifestyle, along with ongoing care and emotional support, may help you prevent or delay atherosclerosis and the problems it can cause.

Certain diseases, conditions, or factors can raise your risk for cardiomyopathy. Major risk factors include a family history, preexisting disease or condition, diabetes, diseases that can damage the heart, long-term alcoholism, and long-term high blood pressure.

Lifestyle changes—including quitting smoking, losing excess weight, avoiding the use of alcohol and illegal drugs, getting enough sleep, and reducing stress—and ongoing care can help you manage cardiomyopathy.

Carotid artery disease may not cause signs or symptoms until it severely narrows or blocks a carotid artery. Signs and symptoms may include a bruit, a transient ischemic attack (TIA), or a stroke. It is important to call 9–1–1 for emergency help if you think you are having a TIA or stroke.

Your doctor will diagnose carotid artery disease based on your medical history, a physical exam, and results from one or more tests: ultrasound, angiography, magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), and computed tomography (CT) angiography.

Although the exact cause of atherosclerosis isn't known, studies show that atherosclerosis is a slow, complex disease that may start in childhood. It develops faster as you age.

Atherosclerosis usually doesn't cause signs and symptoms until it severely narrows or totally blocks a coronary, carotid, peripheral, or renal artery. Many people don't know they have the disease until they have a medical emergency, such as a heart attack or stroke.

High blood pressure is a common disease in which blood flows through blood vessels (arteries) at higher than normal pressures.

There are no screening methods to determine who will or will not develop hypersensitivity pneumonitis and the only prevention is to avoid common environmental sources of substances known to cause this condition.

To diagnose hypersensitivity pneumonitis, your doctor will collect your medical history, assess exposure history to possible causative substances, perform a physical exam, and possibly order diagnostic tests and procedures such as: blood tests, bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), computed tomography (CT), inhalation challenge tests, lung biopsies, lung function tests, precipitin tests, or chest x-rays.