The symptoms of type 1 tend to come on suddenly, and may include irritability and mood changes, increased thirst and urination, fatigue and extreme hunger.With type 2, however, the symptoms are more gradual. "It’s not like someone wakes up one day and they’re a full-blown diabetes patient," explains Dr. Fink. "The sad reality is that [it develops over time and] it's silent."However, once someone has developed type 2, Dr. Fink says the signs can be similar to type 1: intense thirst, peeing a lot more (including getting up to go during the night), feeling fatigued, and possibly, blurred vision. These symptoms, particularly the need to pee, can also be signs of many other less serious issues , too, so you should definitely see your doctor, who can do tests to find out what's really going on."Patients with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes are going to have a state before they get to true diabetes when the pancreas isn’t working as well as it should be," Dr. Fink explains. But when we're talking about " prediabetes ," we're talking about type 2 diabetes. A prediabetes diagnosis means that your blood sugar is elevated, but not yet high enough to warrant a full-blown type 2 diagnosis. Insulin resistance can actually be reversed with lifestyle changes, like diet and exercise, if caught during prediabetes, making it a critical window for changing your habits.There are a lot of complicated factors that contribute to your risk for insulin resistance, but you're more likely to develop prediabetes (and diabetes) if you're overweight, have a family history of the disease, have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), or come from certain ethnic backgrounds (Asian- and African-Americans are most at-risk).While the rise in diabetes is related to the obesity epidemic, we also know that weight alone isn't necessarily a reliable predictor of problems on an individual level. No matter how heavy you are, the thing to remember is that it's lifestyle that matters most: "If you're addicted to processed carbohydrates, eat everything on the run, sit at a desk all day, never exercise, and have a family history of diabetes, those are all major factors to take into account," Dr. Fink says.It's important to check with your doctor about your risk for diabetes, get your blood-glucose levels checked regularly (this is often a routine part of an annual check-up), and if necessary, make those lifestyle changes everyone's always talking about. "It's easier to think of food and exercise as medicine than it is to take medicine," Dr. Fink says. And it's better to start thinking of those things as medicine sooner rather than later.