The Orr's Island, Maine mother of two, one of about 16 million Americans with diabetes, was prone to low blood sugars while pregnant and postpartum. One night, after nursing her newborn to sleep, she lay down beside her preschooler son, Sam ,while her husband stayed with their restless baby in another room.

"I went into low-blood-sugar so severely, I began convulsing in my sleep, she recalls. "Sam woke up, saw this, and tried to wake me. When he couldn't, he stayed calm, remembered what we'd taught him, and pressed the phone button that dials his grandmother's house up the road."

By the time his grandmother arrived, and his father woke up, the four-year-old had found the glucose gel kept for such emergencies, squirted some into his mother's mouth, then proceeded to make her a snack, knowing this was something she usually needed. "He told his grandmother, 'Mommy likes peanut butter and crackers. Hope it's OK that I made some for me, too,'" his mother says.

Types of diabetes
Prindall, 42, is one of about 800,000 with Type 1 diabetes, which develops when the pancreas stops producing the hormone insulin. Always insulin-dependent, this type is often called "juvenile" diabetes, because its onset usually (though not always) comes early in life.

The Joslin Diabetes Center estimates another 10 million Americans have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which occurs when the body's cells aren't able to efficiently use the insulin it produces. Type 2, typically regulated through diet, exercise and oral medication, is often called the "Silent Stalker" because symptoms may not show at all, and up to a million more Americans may have Type 2 and not know it.

Women at greater risk
Both types of diabetes are more common in people of African-, Latin-, Asian- and Native-American backgrounds, and both occur with more frequency in women, with one-third of women with Type 2 still undiagnosed, according to the Center for Women's Healthcare at Cornell University.

They need to know, says C Robert Meloni, MD, a Fellow of the American College of Endocrinology, because elevated blood-sugar can cause permanent damage. This can include blindness from injury to blood vessels in the eyes (retinopathy); kidney disease, nerve damage (neuropathy) and increased risk of cardiovascular disease (women with diabetes are up to five times more vulnerable).

Type 2 diabetes is growing at what has been called epidemic rates, and much of it may be preventable. Data from the Finnish Diabetes Detection and Prevention Trail determined that exercise and attention to diet can reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by about 50 percent in people with impaired glucose tolerance.

Proven measures include reducing fat intake, boosting dietary fiber, opting for complex carbohydrates over processed ones, losing 10 to 20 pounds of excess weight and increasing exercise, which not only helps shed pounds, but reduces the visceral fat around organs.

Meloni names the factors that put women at risk for Type 2 diabetes as being more than 20 percent overweight, being over 40, lack of activity, family history of diabetes and previous gestational diabetes (a form of the disease that only occurs during pregnancy.)

Diabetes symptoms include excessive thirst, urinary frequency, unexplained weight loss and blurred vision. The first two occur because the body attempts to siphon off excess blood sugar by excreting it from the body.