Intermittent Fasting and Reproductive Health by Zoe Moreland

TRIP opened my eyes to incorporating research in my future scientific explorations and encouraged me to branch outside of my comfort zone.

TRIP Initiative has not only given me valuable learning experiences in a lab that I would not get in my typical classroom setting lectures, but has also given me an opportunity to explore research as a future career. Before TRIP, I did not see myself being interested in research at all-- I saw myself being in a career that only focused on healthcare. Although I still want to go into a healthcare profession, TRIP opened my eyes to incorporating research in my future scientific explorations and encouraged me to branch outside of my comfort zone. Overall, TRIP was an excellent, informative program that allowed me to independently focus on projects I found genuinely interesting.

For my independent project, I decided to research how intermittent fasting affects female fertility. Intermittent fasting is becoming a popular diet around the world, and gives people an alternative to traditional dieting. This diet focuses on eating only at designated times of the day, most commonly fasting from late afternoon to mid morning. I wanted to know if essentially depriving the body of its regular nutrients would have a negative impact on fertility, since the body must be healthy in order to successfully reproduce without complications.

​Throughout my experiment, I fasted my fruit flies every day and then conducted assays that allowed me to assess female fertility, embryonic viability, and overall health. At the end of my experiment, my data suggested that intermittent fasting negatively affect female fertility and decreased overall health. Although I was not necessarily surprised with this outcome, the process of doing research was exciting, and something I was able to do almost completely independently.

---