Mahoning Valley - November was diabetes awareness month, and Akron Children's Hospital in Boardman said one in five adolescents have pre-diabetic symptoms and report an increase in Type 2 diabetes. 

12-year-old Ammeritleen Kaur originally from Warren, but now living in Alleghany County, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was five years old. She went from being a normal healthy child to daily tracking of food, injections and now syringes.

"Perfectly happy health child and she gets sick one day, we didn't know why," Ammeritleen's mother Sandeep said, "She never got sick. That's what our life was, she's not sick every day but it's just a part of her life now."

Type 1 diabetes is when the body has a hard time producing insulin. Type 2 is when the body has a hard time processing blood sugar.

While Type 1 is not preventable, Type 2 is.

However, Dr. Natinder Saini of Akron Children's Hospital in Boardman said Type 2, known to be more common in adults, is showing an increase in children, especially girls ages 12-16.

"You start to have symptoms such as increased thirst, increased need to go to the bathroom, especially at night kids will start to feel they are having more need to get up in the middle of the night, fatigue, they may have unintentional weight loss," Saini said, "But these symptoms come on very gradually compared to type one diabetes where they can come on quickly to alert a parent that something is wrong."

Saini said lifestyle and family history play a big role and urges parents to visit the pediatrician regularly.

"Not drinking your calories, limiting sugary beverages, improving physical activity," she said, "You can help out at home, vacuuming, raking leaves, cleaning the snow, weeding, just doing general chores around the home. In between maybe activities or their homework they can listen to a song or dance to a song, so any form of physical activity that can be done together as a family will bring more benefits because it's a team effort."

Saini said undiagnosed diabetes can lead to issues later in life, such as high cholesterol, heart disease and reproductive issues in girls.