Questão de Inglês — Interpretação de Textos (Understanding) — VUNESP 2026

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

On most days, I stick to my routine, especially when it comes to sleep. I get ready for bed well before I begin to feel tired: changing into my pajamas, cleaning my teeth, and doing an overly elaborate skin care routine. I leave my phone in the dining room where it stays overnight, then retire to my bedroom — one that’s quiet, a little dark, and of perfect temperature — to briefly write down in my gratitude journal. A half-hour of fiction reading follows, before turning the lights out at roughly 11pm.

Eight-and-a-half hours later, my alarm rings and I wake up feeling…tired. I am middle-aged, exercise regularly, and am, as far as I know, healthy (knock on wood). So why do I still feel tired most mornings, even after getting enough sleep?

It turns out I’m far from alone. According to a 2023 meta-analysis that examined 91 studies across three continents, one in every five adults worldwide experienced general fatigue lasting up to six months, despite having no underlying medical conditions. Women were more likely to be fatigued than men, regardless of whether they had children or not — a finding that was echoed across multiple studies.

Tiredness is “a very, very common” complaint among the patients, says Rosalind Adam, a family doctor who has been practicing in Scotland for more than a decade. The condition is so frequent that the National Health Service even has its own acronym for it: Tired All The Time (TATT).

Even though feeling tired is very common, scientists’ understanding of fatigue — what causes it, how it changes our bodies and brains, as well as how best to treat it — is incredibly limited. Even defining it has been tricky. Tiredness is different from sleepiness, which is “more a propensity to fall asleep”, explains Adam. “The two are interrelated, of course, but fatigue is much more multidimensional,” she says.

(Sandy Ong. www.bbc.com, 25.01.2024. Adaptado.)