Diabetes is a disease affecting the metabolism. At this point in time, there are three distinct forms of the ailment:

1. Type-1 diabetes is a disease that has been somewhat deceptively named juvenile diabetes. Most likely this term was used because type-1 diabetes is most commonly diagnosed in childhood when sufferers present with health problems associated with their body's inability to metabolize glucose adequately. It is considered to be on par with the autoimmune disorders as the body itself attacks the pancreas and inhibits its ability to manufacture and secrete insulin. Children suffering from diabetes will grow up to be adults suffering from diabetes and since the disease is chronic, there is no cure. Type-1 diabetes cannot be prevented or remedied and the only treatment currently available is a daily supplementation of insulin via subcutaneous injection.
2. Type-2 diabetes has been dubbed adult onset diabetes because by and large it is an insulin insufficiency caused by lifestyle choices, poor nutrition, and a sedentary lifestyle. This made it primarily a disease diagnosed in adulthood, but with the growing umber of obese children, even juveniles have now been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes. Treatment or diabetes remedies options include behavior modification, nutritional changes, exercise programs, and in severe cases also oral medication to help with the metabolism of glucose. This form of the disease is avoidable and in many cases also curable by simply changing behavioral patterns and ridding the body of excess fat.
3. The third form of diabetes affects pregnant women who may or may not have previously been diagnosed with another type of diagnosis and is aptly named gestational diabetes. It is thought to affect about nine percent o pregnancy women and symptoms are more or less confined to high blood glucose levels that occur at some point of the pregnancy. There do not have to be contributory causes, such as they are associated with type-2 diabetes, but it may affect any woman. Since gestational diabetes puts the unborn child at risk for health problems prior to and upon delivery, monitoring of the mother is strict and continuous.

As though the body's inability to adequately metabolize glucose were not grounds for enough concerns, there are several complications that are currently associated with diabetes itself, necessitating specialized monitoring by physicians to ensure the patient's safety and continued health:

• Blindness has been reported by some patients whose diabetes led to damage of the retina.
• Gangrene and even amputation are part and parcel of suffering from diabetes if wounds are not closely monitored by the patient. While those not suffering from wounds might be able to get away with simply putting a Band-Aid on a wound and then more or less forget about it, trusting the body to the healing, those presenting with the disease know that wounds will not heal as readily as they used but instead provide sources of continued infection. Failure to seek out physician's help at the first signs of trouble may have far reaching and problematic result that could necessitate lengthy hospital stays and surgeries.