Shift work and heavy lifting may reduce women’s fertility
A physically demanding job or work schedules outside normal office hours may lower a woman's ability to conceive, suggests research published in Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Researchers say women who work nights and irregular shifts have fewer eggs capable of developing into healthy embryos than those who keep regular daytime hours.
The study, which involved two groups of women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF), examined egg quality among 313 women who had completed one IVF cycle as well as the total number of eggs in the ovaries of 473 women at a fertility clinic.