#23 - Chronic back pain is usually caused by a herniated or

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (E)

Chronic back pain is usually caused by damage to the spinal disk that occurs years before such pain develops. According to the last sentence of the stimulus, a contributing factor to the onset of chronic back pain among people over the age of 30 is the deterioration of the abdominal muscles caused by insufficient exercise.

Answer choice (A): Just because one person out of five has a damaged spinal disk guarantees neither that this person will develop chronic back pain, nor that others will avoid it. It is entirely possible some spinal disk injuries do not lead to chronic back pain; likewise, it is also possible that other conditions such as obesity or bad posture also cause chronic back pain.

Answer choice (B): While regular exercise may be necessary to delay or forestall the onset of chronic back pain among those with injured spinal disks, there is no evidence that exercising is sufficient to prevent back pain. Furthermore, causes for chronic back pain other than injured spinal disks might not be manageable by exercise at all. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): While in most cases the disk will have been damaged years before the pain develops, it is entirely possible that in some cases chronic pain develops a lot sooner. Furthermore, even if chronic pain always took years to develop, answer choice (C) only talks about "mild and fleeting" back pain. It is quite possible that many patients experience such pain at the time their spinal disks are injured, since "mild and fleeting" back pain is not the same as "chronic" pain.

Answer choice (D): While doctors may be able to predict which spinal disk patients will develop back pain (e.g. those who fail to exercise), there is no way to make a similar prediction if the group consists of ordinary people without chronic back pain. At best, doctors may be able to diagnose the 30+ year olds who have herniated or degenerated spinal disks but show no symptoms (usually, one in five will fall into that category). However, since injured spinal disks may not be the singular cause of chronic back pain, it is impossible to estimate who else will ultimately develop back pain.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. If insufficient exercise is a contributing factor to the onset of chronic back pain among people with injured spinal disks, it follows that exercising represents a strategy that can be effective in delaying or preventing the onset of pain.

Notice the degree of likelihood expressed by the correct answer choice: "there is a strategy that can be effective in delaying" the onset of pain. Proving that a certain outcome is possible is a lot easier than proving that this outcome is certain. Extreme language is rarely the hallmark of a good Must Be True answer.

[reop6780]

The correct answer is E while I chose B.

The last sentence of the stimuli establishes a causal relation. Based upon the causation, i chose B.

I guess B is a bit exaggerated as the chronic pain is GENERALLY brought by deterioration of the abd. and spinal muscle...?
(generally signifies "most" of occasions..?)

Also,
Is answer E's strategy meant to be sufficient exercise?

[Lucas Moreau]

Hello, reop,

B and E are really the two contenders for this one, aren't they? The problem with answer choice B is it goes too far. It isn't necessarily true that regular exercise will always keep someone free from back pain - it's just likely! That's where answer choice E comes in. And there are also other causes of chronic back pain, hence the "usually caused" language.

For Must Be True questions, an answer choice that says "can" is more likely to be true than an answer choice that says "must". This isn't true every time, obviously! But it's easier to prove that something can be true than that it is true.

For answer choice E, that strategy is, in fact, sufficient exercise. You got that right!

Hope that helps,
Lucas Moreau

[reop6780]

thank you!

[puppytiff]

I chose C instead of E on this one.

C sounds right to me because in the stimulus, "in most case the disk will have been damaged years before chronic pain develops.." and I thought C is saying the same thing but in an opposite way.

I crossed E when I read "strategy" and thinking there's nothing about a strategy mentioned in the stimulus.

Now that I understand E is right, but I don't know why is C wrong? Also, how do I prevent crossing out answers like E when I read a keyword that hasn't appeared in the stimulus, cuz I do this a lot

Thanks!

[Eric Ockert]

Be careful with being too visual when selecting answers on Must Be True questions. There are many ways the test can say things in logically similar, but visually dissimilar ways. Here, answer choice (E) speaks of a strategy that can be effective. The wording there is very permissive and many things could qualify under that description. For one, since this pain is "generally" caused by insufficient exercise, then a strategy of increased exercise could potentially be effective.

On the other hand, note the very restrictive language of answer choice (C). It says that people rarely suffer even mild and fleeting back pain when these problems start. That's a very tough standard to prove. First of all, this stimulus is all about chronic back pain, and doesn't really speak to mild back pain. Secondly, even if it did, you would have to have fairly precise facts to prove that this was rare.

So one big tip I would have: focus less on the exact matching of terms between the subject of the stimulus and the subject of the answer choices and more on the logical language that surrounds those terms. I often like to think of this as focusing less on what the answers say, and more on how they say it. The LSAT often loves to play games on this front, making incorrect answers look like what was said in the stimulus and correct answers look different. But the way they state these answer choices can greatly affect whether or not the statement is provable.

Hope that helps!

[lunsandy]

Hi Powerscore,

I fell for the trap and chose C, but upon review I do agree E is the correct answer. However, want to understand why it is wrong that I chose C in the first place.

I chose C initially because I thought patients "rarely" is within the subset of "most case will have been damaged years before chronic pain develops." Yes, I agree there is definitely a shift in language from "even mild and fleeting" that I did not catch onto initially. However, I am just uncertain whether "rarely" (not often) can be considered within the subset of "most" because we are saying that most people do not show symptoms of chronic pain, so I assumed that it is rare/ not often that patients will suffer from chronic back pain.

Thanks a lot!

[Shannon Parker]

Hi Lunsandy,

Answer choice C states "patients rarely suffer even mild and fleeting back pain at the time that a spinal disk first becomes herniated or degenerated."

While the stimulus states that "in most cases the disk will have been damaged years before chronic pain develops," it is only discussing chronic pain, and the answer choice is discussing mild and fleeting pain. Therefore we have no knowledge of whether or not answer choice C is true. Since this is a must be true question, answer choice C cannot be the correct answer.

I hope this clarifies it for you.

[SammyWu11201]

I chose E because it is more "provable" against the stimulus, but I don't know, I also feel like D can be a viable choice as well. Sure, doctors can accurately predict which people who do not have chronic pain will develop it in the future, if they know who has sufficient or insufficient exercise. You can then contrapose back.

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Sammy!

Careful with the assumptions you're making about answer choice (D). As the explanation above states:

Answer choice (D): While doctors may be able to predict which spinal disk patients will develop back pain (e.g. those who fail to exercise), there is no way to make a similar prediction if the group consists of ordinary people without chronic back pain. At best, doctors may be able to diagnose the 30+ year olds who have herniated or degenerated spinal disks but show no symptoms (usually, one in five will fall into that category). However, since injured spinal disks may not be the singular cause of chronic back pain, it is impossible to estimate who else will ultimately develop back pain.

Nothing in the stimulus says that doctors can predict generally who will develop chronic back pain in the future based on sufficient/insufficient exercise. It's only people with spinal disk damage that will develop back pain due to insufficient exercise. But not everyone has spinal disk damage. So they can't predict who will have back pain based on exercise alone.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey