by Andy McInnes, Staff Writer/Social Media Specialist, All Habs Hockey Magazine

So whilst we all have fun growing our wonderful variety of awesome moustaches, let’s step back and consider another of the men’s health issues that the Movember Foundation is tackling: testicular cancer.

Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men under 40 years of age. The side effects of its treatment can be harsh. Movember supports many initiatives from education about early detection, diagnosis, onto the treatment, as well as ongoing support for sufferers of this horrific disease.

The Movember Foundations largest investment in testicular cancer is a global programme in international research bringing together researchers from all over the world to increase understanding of the disease. This allows for more effective treatment. By bringing together all these researchers, results are more quickly obtained and collaboration means time is not wasted on similar research.

Specific projects around the world?

In Ireland, Movember has invested money in a nationwide community based counselling service. This provides individual counselling services to cancer patients and their families. Funds were given to 21 community based cancer support services to provide these professional counselling services and in 2013, 1001 clients took up a massive amount of 5420 counselling services across all cancers.

Research is massive, and collaborators from several countries, including Canada, have been involved in designing a project which will help to investigate the mechanisms of relapse and hopefully develop and provide more effective treatments for those men who do suffer relapse.

So many people around the world are affected by this illness…..they may be sufferers, or family or mates to the sufferers. It can take our loved ones away from as very quickly, it’s devastating and leaves a massive void in the lives of so many. Let’s do our bit to help reduce those numbers.

If you would like to make a donation to support this wonderful work, please follow this link. Alternatively please have regular health checks, or encourage your mates and loved ones to have health checks. You may just save their lives.