Unconquered Peaks

Caffeine is everywhere. Whether that be your morning coffee from Served, an evening tea, or energy drinks before exams – it has become embedded into a normal part of our daily lives, especially for students balancing busy schedules. It promises alertness, focus, and a quick boost of energy. But while caffeine is often seen as harmless, and in fact very helpful, consuming too much of it comes with hidden costs that are very easy to overlook.

It always seems to happen at the worst times. You are sitting in a school assembly, a very serious topic being presented by the headmistress on a detailed PowerPoint slide, and everyone is completely silent. Then, all of a sudden, you get hiccups; their unexpected arrival catches you off guard, coming too quickly for you to suppress the unmistakable sound. It’s a perfect example of an intensely embarrassing moment. Yet, on a more humorous note, most of us have also experienced the exact opposite: laughing so hard that we trigger hiccups, only to end up laughing even more.

If you, like me, are an avid (or just regular) listener of The Rest is Politics, you would have heard Alistair Campbell’s remark on the latest episode of the podcast released on the 25 of March, where he stated that ‘5 million tonnes of CO2 have been released into the atmosphere’ so far as a result of the miliary activity in Iran and across the Middle East since the launch of US and Israeli Missiles on Iran on the 28 of February 2026. This statement drew my attention to the ecological consequences of war that are often ignored or unexamined. War is explored as predominantly a threat to the natural social and political orders. Wars are also enacted mostly to bring about social or political change, yet this does not prevent them from having a lasting environmental legacy.

We have all always been told that sport is good for the brain. This is due to the fact that it builds a stronger memory, therefore putting you in a better mood, resulting in sharper focus – the usual motivational posters. But recent research suggests there’s a catch: the very activities that build resilience might also, under certain conditions, quietly undermine one of the brain’s most important defences: the blood–brain barrier.