Doctors and other experts are still debating whether this condition is actually a disease, but if detected they often prescribe medications and also strongly suggest you make changes in your diet and exercise plans.

An estimated 79 million adults in American. have prediabetes, where blood sugar levels are up slightly but not in the range that qualifies for diabetes. Prediabetes raises your risk of developing full blown type 2 diabetes over the following 10 years.

To find out if you may be prediabetic you can undergo one of two tests - fasting plasma glucose test (FPG), or a two-hour glucose tolerance test (OGTT). These tests involve blood samples that are taken after an overnight fast, with the two-hour test including the consumption of a sugary drink and a wait before the blood draw.

The standard fasting blood glucose should be under 100 mg/dl. So, if your number is in the 100-125 mg/dl range, you're considered prediabetic, two test results showing 126 mg/dlor over signal diabetes itself.

For the glucose tolerance test, the result should be under 140 mg/dl. For those with prediabetes, your blood glucose will be in the area of 140 to 199 mg/dl, should your number be reading at 200 mg/dl or higher, you're considered diabetic.

Some patients may take the A1C (glycated hemoglobin test) which calculates average blood sugar for the last 60 - 90 days. If the levels are from 5.7 to 6.4 you're considered prediabetic.

The trouble with prediabetes is that so few people even realize they have it, especially if going to the doctor for regular physicals isn't something you can fit into your hectic schedule. And since there are no symptoms, you'll have no reason to suspect anything. In fact, according to a CDC study, just 7% of patients have been told by their doctor that they are suffering with prediabetes.

The thing is, the extra sugar that's part of prediabetes can already be causing problems in some patients. The eyes are experiencing microaneurysms (enlargement of blood vessels) which can result in diabetic retinopathy and permanent vision loss. Others could be experience protein in their urine, an early indicator of kidney damage, that comes from the extra glucose.

This condition also ups your chances for heart disease, the top cause of death for Americans. Those with prediabetes are at 1.5 times greater risk of heart disease in comparison to healthy people. For those with diabetes, the risk of heart disease is two to four times higher than for non diabetics.

If you also have additional risk factors for diabetes, prediabetes as you might expect, puts you well on your way. Getting older, a genetic predisposition, being overweight, inactive and belonging to part of some ethnic groups all contribute to your risk of this disease.

But you can still put a stop to things. If you act right now.

You need to make the changes to your lifestyle, to what you eat and how active you are, in order to stop or delay the progression toward dangerous type 2 diabetes.

If you drop around 10% of your body weight, start working out 30 minutes each day five times a week (total 150 minutes/week), research shows you can bring down the chance of getting type 2 diabetes by nearly 60% over three years.

Eating more fruits and veggies, limiting those tempting saturated and trans fats (no more than 30% of calories from fat with no more than 10% from saturated fat) are smart ways to get started to avoid symptoms of pre diabetes developing.

By Kirsten Whittaker