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 Researchers followed 1,739 nurses who were trying to get pregnant
and estimated 16 percent of them failed to achieve this goal within
12 months, and 5 percent still hadn’t conceived after two years.
Working more than 40 hours a week was linked with taking 20 percent
longer to get pregnant compared to women who worked 21 to 40 hours.
Moving or lifting at least 25-pound loads several times a day was
also tied to delayed pregnancy, extending the time to conception by
about 50 percent.
“Our results show that heavy work, both in terms of physical strain
and long hours, appears to have a detrimental impact on female
nurses’ ability to get pregnant,” lead study author Audrey Gaskins,
a researcher at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston,
said by email.
Most healthy couples can conceive within three to six months, though
the process can take longer for people who are older or who have
fertility compromised by certain medical conditions or by smoking or
excessive drinking.
For the current study, Gaskins and colleagues reviewed data on women
participating in a nationwide survey of nurses between 2010 and 2014
who at some point said they were trying to conceive.
Half of the women were at least 33 years old, about 44 percent were
overweight or obese and 22 percent were current or former smokers.
The majority of the women worked exclusively days or nights, though
16 percent of them had rotating shifts at different times. About one
third of the women were on their feet for at least eight hours a
day, and 40 percent reported lifting heavy loads up to five times a
daily.
Frequency of night shifts or the duration of rotating or
non-rotating evening work wasn’t linked to the time it took women to
conceive, the study found.
When researchers excluded women who had irregular menstrual cycles,
which can independently impair fertility, they still found that
heavy lifting was linked to a 33 percent longer timeline to
conception. The impact of heavy lifting was also more pronounced for
overweight and obese women.
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It’s possible that certain working conditions might make pregnancy
more likely, and it’s also possible that women who struggle to get
pregnant may choose to work longer hours, the researchers
acknowledge in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
There also may be a much simpler explanation for the delayed times
to conception for women who work more or come home more physically
exhausted from lifting multiple heavy loads, said Courtney Lynch, a
specialist in reproductive health at Ohio State University in
Columbus.
“If this effect is real, it is likely due to the fact that these
women are having less frequent intercourse due to their work
demands,” Lynch, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
Couples who want to get pregnant faster should have sex at least
twice a week, and not only on weekends, she advised. Women should
also maintain a healthy weight, get enough exercise and avoid
smoking and stress.
When women struggle to conceive, they may consider using devices
that help track ovulation, Lynch added. Often sold as fertility
monitors, some of these devices pinpoint ovulation by testing urine
for spikes in certain hormones during that time of the month.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1HJlKCk Occupational and Environmental
Medicine, online August 6, 2015.
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