Q21 - A patient complained of feeling

by **hoffman36** Wed Apr 06, 2011 6:11 pm

I find (A) to be the more convincing answer. If (A) were true then the doctor wouldn't recommend more sleep because the longer one sleeps, the more likely they would feel fatigued (because of having a harder time waking from sleeping). Is (A) wrong because then the doctor would recommend the patient to sleep less? Or because the connection between waking from sleep and feeling fatigued is unwarranted? I guess I understand how (E) is better than (A) and therefore, the right answer, but just want to confirm why in fact (A) is wrong.

Thanks for your help!

by **peg_city** Sat Apr 09, 2011 2:12 pm

Discrepancy:
constantly fatigued, only 4-6 hours of sleep
vs.
Patient was not advised to sleep more

A is wrong because awakening easier won't help the fact that the patient is feeling CONSTANTLY fatigued.

by **giladedelman** Sat Apr 09, 2011 6:13 pm

Great discussion!

Peg_city, I think your response gets to an issue that hoffman36 raises: "the connection between waking from sleep and feeling fatigued is unwarranted." Boom! Exactly! There is no information here that suggests that the harder it is to wake from sleeping, the less fatigued you are. You're adding in a whole extra assumption to justify this choice.

As you guys have said, we're trying to figure out why doctors don't advise the patient to sleep more, even though his lack of sleep contributes to his fatigue. My first thought was, they must be afraid of some negative consequence of this advice.

(E) explains this surprising advice. If worrying about sleep can actually make sleeping harder, then advising the patient to sleep more could be counterproductive. (By the way, I can vouch for the truth of answer E!)

As for the others:

(B) is out because, okay, the first two hours do the most, but we know the lack of sleep is contributing to the fatigue, so why not sleep more?

(C) is wrong for basically the same reason: some people might need less, but we know this guy needs more.

(D) is way out of scope: we have nothing to connect nightmares to the patient's fatigue, and also, your last hour of sleep is your last hour no matter how many hours you get.

Thanks for posting, guys! I hope we're all clear now.

by **jlz1202** Wed Aug 31, 2011 12:37 am

I chose (B) and I thought this way:
since the first two hours do the most to alleviate fatigue, then the patient does not have to sleep more, since no matter how many hours he/she sleeps, he/she has the first two hours of sleep
I don’t quite understand what does (B) trying to convey exactly?
Thank you very much for help!

by **giladedelman** Thu Sep 01, 2011 9:35 am

Thanks for posting!

The problem with (B) is that even if that's true, the stimulus tells us that more sleep will reduce fatigue -- that's a fact. So given that fact, why don't doctors tell the patient to sleep more? Even if the first two hours are most effective, you would still expect the doctors to recommend more sleep if the patient is super fatigued all the time.

Does that make sense?

by **jlz1202** Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:46 pm

Thanks! I understand now, very enlightening!

by **nflamel69** Wed Jan 23, 2013 10:04 pm

the only reason why i dislike E is it mentions "worry about satisfying the need for sufficient sleep". Are we suppose to assume if they were to be advised to sleep more, they would worry about it? can any geek help?

by **MayMay** Mon Jan 28, 2013 9:43 pm

nflamel69 Wrote:the only reason why i dislike E is it mentions "worry about satisfying the need for sufficient sleep". Are we suppose to assume if they were to be advised to sleep more, they would worry about it? can any geek help?

i'm right with you!
answer choice E requires us to assume these patients will "worry," no?
Can someone shed some light?

by **MayMay** Wed Jan 30, 2013 11:09 pm

MayMay Wrote:
nflamel69 Wrote:the only reason why i dislike E is it mentions "worry about satisfying the need for sufficient sleep". Are we suppose to assume if they were to be advised to sleep more, they would worry about it? can any geek help?

i'm right with you!
answer choice E requires us to assume these patients will "worry," no?
Can someone shed some light?

Hey nflamel69-- did you figure it out?

by **leroyjenkins** Wed Aug 14, 2013 4:07 pm

E requires an unsupported assumption, as the two previous posts mention.

Can a Manhattan LSATer help explain this one?

Because, if we are going to grant unwarranted assumptions, then couldn't C and B also be correct?

The stimulus only tells us that getting 4-6 hours a night contributed to his condition. But it DOES NOT say that this constitutes too little sleep. Perhaps that is too much sleep for this patient. We are told that he only gets 4-6 hours, but so what? Maybe that amount, which is small for the general population, is too much for this patient. We are not told.

I think eliminating B and C requires the assumption that 4-6 hours a night constitutes a lack of sleep for this patient. That is certainly a reasonable assumption, but it is not supported given the info in the stimulus.

Even so, E requires a pretty big assumption. While I agree that is is probably the best answer, it is not well supported.

Can a Geek chime in?

by **maryadkins** Sat Aug 17, 2013 10:18 am

Good discussion here. I think that being told that the patient gets "only 4-6 hours of sleep per night" and that "this was determined to contribute to his condition" means it's too little sleep. The word "only" would not make sense in the sentence, otherwise. (Side note: while you want to be OCD about parsing language on the LSAT, you can't parse it so aggressively that you turn it into something that doesn't make sense.)

If we infer that 4-6 hours contributes to his condition because it is too little sleep, then (B) and (C) do not help explain the situation. He's still getting too little sleep, even if the first two hours are doing the most to aid his fatigue, and even if some people need less than 8. We still don't know why he wasn't advised to sleep more.

The only answer that feasibly explains the lack of advice therefore is (E).

by **yiwoo0216** Mon Nov 25, 2013 9:36 pm

Nobody has yet touched on the term used in the stimulus that the patient 'averaged' 4-6 hours. I'm not sure if i'm being overly nitpicky, but is it trying to leave the possibility that he could be waking up after every hour whereby answer B would then be irrelevant?

The first time through, I chose B, but after discovering it was wrong, i reasoned to myself that 'average' was a key word that i neglected.

Any input would be helpful

by **Mab6q** Wed Jul 22, 2015 8:28 pm

yiwoo0216 Wrote:Nobody has yet touched on the term used in the stimulus that the patient 'averaged' 4-6 hours. I'm not sure if i'm being overly nitpicky, but is it trying to leave the possibility that he could be waking up after every hour whereby answer B would then be irrelevant?

The first time through, I chose B, but after discovering it was wrong, i reasoned to myself that 'average' was a key word that i neglected.

Any input would be helpful

The quick and easy way to eliminate B is to consider whether B explains why the doctors would advise against sleeping more. If the first two hours do the most work in alleviating fatigue, that's great, but it doesn't mean the other time spent sleeping isn't useful. The doctors are saying you don't want to sleep more; with B, at best we know that sleeping more will only slightly modify the problem, but it doesn't mean that it will make things worse (doctors are advising against). Make sense?

by **BarryM800** Mon Mar 30, 2020 9:34 am

Just a quick comment about the previous post - the stimulus states "the patient was not advised to sleep more." It's still different from saying "the doctors would advise AGAINST sleeping more."

by **Laura Damone** Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:23 pm

Nice catch, Barry! That's an important distinction. Not providing advice to do a thing isn't the same as advising against it!