Oh MOVEMBER! The HAIRIEST time of the year! No-Shave November or Mustache November, whatever you call it, men all over the world are growing out their facial hair. Why? To show off their “manliness” nah, it’s actually all in hopes to bring awareness to men’s health! Prostate and testicular cancers as well as depression are three of the top killers and yet it isn’t being talked about as much as it should be. Men have always had the lower life expectancy. In all those social study books, regardless of the country, women tended to live several years longer than their male counter-part.
Movember was founded by a group of friends who wanted to bring back an old fashion trend – the moustache. Once the trend got popular, the group of friends decided to raise money to bring awareness for prostate cancer.
Here are 12 interesting facts about men and all that hair!
1. No-Shave November is an organization that encourages people to donate the money they would have spend for hair removal to the American Cancer Society.
2. A fancier word for shaving is pogonotomy.
3. The average man with a moustache has a tendency to touch it 760 times a day.
4. Stroking a moustache can help improve concentration and cognitive ability.
5. A study done at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia found that growing facial hair can help prevent skin cancer against 90-95% of harmful UV rays.
6. Moustaches help to filter the air breathed in through the nose.
(source: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2015/9/world-beard-and-moustache-championships-ten-of-the-most-hirsute-guinness-world-r)
7. The World Beard and Moustache Championships is a real thing where men all over the world compete to see who has the best and most unique facial hair (also to raise money for charity).
8. The longest growing moustache is 14 feet long, by Ram Singh Chauhan.
9. The longest growing beard measures 8 ft and 2.5 in, belongs to Sarwan Singh.
10. Antanas Kontrimas has the strongest beard in the world. He was able to lift a 63.80 kg human in 2013 and next pull a 1,952 kg car in 2014.
11. Woman can grow beards and moustaches too! In fact, Vivian Wheeler holds the record of the longest beard on a woman measuring 10.04 inches from the root to tip.
12. Facial hair has always been linked with wisdom. Many philosophers, inventors, geniuses sported facial hair such as Socrates, Confucius, Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Leonardo DaVinci, Salvador Dali, Mahatma Gandhi, and more.
So there you have it! Celebrate Movember and let it grow! Even you if you can’t grow you can still support!