Advanced Reading Practice
Level: B1
Skill: Reading
Topic: Sleep
A2 Reading Article
Why “I Can’t Sleep” Often Means Two Different Problems
Several students have been telling me the same thing recently: they feel tired, low on energy, and it’s already noticeable by Monday—even after a full weekend of rest. By Thursday or Friday, it’s worse. When I ask what’s going on, most reach for the same word: “insomnia.” But when I ask what they actually did the night before, the answers cluster around the same few things: scrolling social media, watching short videos, playing games.
One student was different. He said he lay in bed, wide awake, tossing and turning, going over his day and his problems, unable to switch off. That’s a genuine difficulty getting to sleep. The others weren’t struggling in the same way—their real problem was something closer to overstimulation, still riding the effects of everything they’d been doing right up until the moment they tried to close their eyes.
overstimulation — a state in which the mind is too active and alert to settle down
Go to Bed, or Get to Sleep?
This distinction matters more than it first appears. Going to bed is when you lie down. Getting to sleep is when you actually fall asleep—and for most screen-scrollers, the real problem sits in the gap between the two, not in the falling-asleep process itself.
Two separate things work against that gap closing quickly, and they’re easy to confuse. The light from a phone screen signals to the brain that it’s still daytime, delaying the release of the hormone that makes you feel sleepy. But separately—and this is the part most people miss—the content itself matters too. A stressful message, a gripping video, or a competitive game keeps the mind alert regardless of how dim the screen is. Turning the brightness down doesn’t solve the problem on its own if what’s on the screen is still keeping the brain busy.
hormone — a chemical made in the body that controls how a body part works or how you feel
How Much Is Actually Enough?
There’s a second layer worth understanding, beyond what happens right before sleep: how much sleep, and how consistently, actually matters.
Most adults need somewhere between seven and nine hours a night—no less, and, somewhat surprisingly, no more. Research on sleep and long-term health has repeatedly found a U-shaped pattern: both people who consistently sleep too little and people who consistently sleep too much show worse outcomes than people who sleep somewhere in the middle, with the lowest risk sitting around seven hours. This doesn’t mean an occasional long lie-in after a hard week is something to worry about—sleeping more after a difficult week is a normal recovery response. It’s the habitual pattern the research is concerned with, and even then, sleeping longer is often simply a sign that something else—tiredness, illness, low mood—is already present, rather than a cause of harm in itself.
U-shaped pattern — a result where both extremes (too little, too much) are worse than the middle
habitual — done regularly, as a repeated pattern, rather than just once
The Body’s Own Clock
Underneath all of this sits something you might call your natural body clock—or, to use its proper name, your circadian rhythm. It’s an internal timing system, roughly twenty-four hours long, that tells your body when to feel alert and when to feel sleepy. Light is its main signal: morning light resets it each day, which is part of why getting outside in the morning genuinely does affect how easily you fall asleep that night—not as a vague wellness tip, but as the direct mechanism the clock actually runs on.
This also explains the “worse by Friday” pattern several students described. The body clock works best with consistency. One late night is easy enough to recover from. But several nights in a row of the same pattern start to add up—a small amount of missed sleep each night, until by the end of the week, you wake up feeling groggy, or worse, no matter how many hours you actually got.
natural body clock / circadian rhythm — the body’s internal system for timing sleep and wakefulness
groggy — feeling dazed, slow, and not fully alert, especially after waking up
Why Hours Aren’t the Whole Story
Interestingly, total hours alone don’t fully explain how rested you feel. While you sleep, your brain moves through different stages, not one continuous state. Lighter stages are linked with the drowsy transition into sleep; deeper stages are where the body does most of its physical repair. Someone who gets eight hours but spends unusually little time in the deepest stage can still wake up feeling sluggish—which is one reason two people can sleep the same number of hours and feel completely different in the morning.
sluggish — slow-moving and lacking energy or alertness
A Genuine Surprise in the Research
One more finding is worth mentioning, carefully. In a small number of studies, a single night of total sleep loss has actually improved mood in some people who experience depression—though the same night of lost sleep can have the opposite effect in people with other conditions entirely. This is not a suggestion to lose sleep on purpose; it’s simply a striking example of how closely mood and sleep are connected, in ways researchers are still working to fully understand.
None of this means every screen before bed is a problem, or that anyone should feel guilty about scrolling occasionally, or worry after one unusually long weekend sleep-in. What seems to matter more, across almost everything in this article, is the pattern—what you tend to do, how consistently, and how you tend to feel the next day. Once you’ve noticed the connection yourself, deciding what—if anything—to change becomes a great deal clearer.
Questions
1. According to the article, what is the real difference between “going to bed” and “getting to sleep”?
2. Why doesn’t simply dimming your screen brightness solve the problem on its own?
3. What does the “U-shaped pattern” tell us about how much sleep is ideal, according to the article?
4. Why might two people sleep the same number of hours but feel completely different the next morning?
5. Reflection: Do you think your own tiredness is closer to the “overstimulation” pattern, the “racing thoughts” pattern, or a mix of both?
6. Reflection: Has noticing your own pattern changed how you think about your sleep?
