Long Work Hours and Heavy Loads Can Delay Pregnancy: Study

There is some truth after all it seems in the old wives' tale. Working long hours and lifting heavy loads could lower a woman's fertility, a new study claims.

The study done on working nurses who were trying to conceive found that working more than 40 hour per week and lifting or moving 25 pounds or more several times a day increased conception time and delayed pregnancy, Fox News reported. The study involved 1,740 nurses at least 33 years old. In the study, 16 percent failed to get pregnant within 12 months while for five percent, pregnancy did not result within two years.

"Women whose work entailed heavy lifting or moving [25 plus pounds more than 15 times/day] also had a longer median duration of pregnancy attempt compared to women who never lifted or moved heavy loads. The association between heavy moving and lifting and duration of pregnancy attempt was more pronounced among overweight or obese women," researchers wrote in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Though the study only involved nurses, experts opine that the observations may have some validity for women in other professions with long working hours. Health experts suggest that women in such professions could get fertility evaluation before trying to conceive to understand if work stress will delay or affect pregnancy.