Movember is a charity that was set up in 2003, with just 30 participants growing a moustache, with the aim of raising awareness and combating health issues that affect men and allowing them to live happier, healthier and longer lives.

Movember has now grown into a global charity with over 5 million participants and has raised a staggering £443 million in just 12 years and has funded 1200+ projects in 21 countries. Movember aims to reduce the number of men dying too early by 25% by the time we get to 2030. Improving men's health is something that we at Kegel8 are also passionate about which is why this year we are helping to do our bit.

What Health Issues are Men Facing?

It is known now that worldwide men die on average six years earlier than women but biologically there is no reason why this should be true. It is often the case that men are much slower to act to health problems and this is often down to the traditional ideas of how men should act and it can be seen by many men that by acknowledging any health problems that they are showing signs of weakness and that talking about them isn’t the done thing.

Movember has chosen to focus on 4 areas for concern in regards to men’s health; prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and suicide and physical activity (or lack of it). The facts associated with each of these issues are truly shocking. It is predicted that rates of prostate cancer are set to double in the next 15 years and the rates of testicular cancer have already doubled in the last 50 years. Suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged under 45 in the UK, with 76% of all suicides in 2014 being men- one every minute (ONS). In a world in which medicine has improved so much in recent years and how society is supposed to be more open and accepting these figures should not be true, however it is a sad fact that they are. During the next month, we are going to talk in more detail about these issues to help promote awareness and contribute towards the goals set by Movember.

So, What are We Actually Doing for Movember?

First, we are aiming to improve awareness of men’s health issues and want to get people, in particular men, talking about them so that the attitude towards these issues changes to one of openness. By combating the social stigmas that exist we can go a long way to making a change. Hopefully our blogs will provide the information and platform to help do that so make sure you look out for them coming in the next month.

We also have team members doing something themselves to help raise the vital funds to ensure the great work of Movember continues. Two of our team members, Alex and Mike, are taking part in Movember GrowYourMo challenge by growing a moustache in the style that you have selected for them both. You can find the results of the vote on our Facebook page. As well as GrowYourMo, Movember are also encouraging people to take part in a Move it challenge to encourage men to do more physical activity. As part of that we have Ashley who is going to do ten 10k runs in 10 days, Vikki who is doing a squat challenge for the month and Sarah will be biking to and from work which will rack up around 370 miles this month. At the end of the month we also have 12 of our team are doing a sponsored walk/jog/run across the Humber Bridge (3 miles) with Alex training to do this in under 20 minutes. All our team members are being sponsored to do all of this and as a business Kegel8 has promised to match all the donations up to £1000!

Hopefully we can do some great work in support of Movember this month and we can make a real difference to men’s health issues globally. If you wish to support us, you can by sharing all our posts to spread the message. You can also donate to our team (Team Tasticles) at http://moteam.co/tashticles and remember, anything you can donate is helpful no matter how small and will also be doubled by us at Kegel8.

Thanks

Team Tasticles