Self-study
Studies suggest that, Support for the vast majority of people who have normal blood pressure, any amount of sodium greater than that required by the body is simply excreted and does not significantly raise blood pressure. ██ ████ ███████ ███ ████ ████ █████ ████████ ███ █████ ██████ ███ █████████ ██ ██████ ██████████ ██████ ██████ ████ ██ ████████ █████ ██████ ███████
Summarize Argument
The author concludes that the only people who need to reduce their sodium intake are those who have high blood pressure and whose bodies can’t process extra sodium. As support, the author references studies that show that for the majority of people who have normal blood pressure, any extra sodium is just excreted from the body and doesn’t cause an increase in blood pressure.
Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that, because the excess sodium is excreted and doesn’t impact blood pressure, it doesn’t have any detrimental impacts on the body. There could be other negative impacts of the excess sodium that occur before it’s excreted.
8.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ █████ ████ █████████ ██████ ███ █████████
a
High blood pressure ██ ████ ███████ ████ ███ ██████████ █████████
This is irrelevant to the argument because, for most people, excess sodium doesn’t significantly raise blood pressure. The argument already says that those with high blood pressure need to restrict their sodium intake.
b
High blood pressure ██ █████████ ███████████ ██ ██████ ██ ████ ██████ ████ ███ ████ █████████
This is not inconsistent with the argument; we know that for the “vast majority,” excess sodium doesn’t significantly raise blood pressure, but the argument allows that this isn’t the case for everyone.
Illusory inconsistency
Illusory inconsistency
Answer is attractive because it seems to (but doesn't actually) contradict the premises or conclusion. In other words, it feints an attack on the premises or conclusion. If correlation is present, the answer choice is often merely an outlier datapoint, which is actually entirely consistent with the correlation.
c
Excess sodium intake ████ ████ █████ ████████ ███ ██████ ███████ ██ ███████ ██████ ███████
(C) shows how excess sodium intake can be detrimental even though the excess sodium is excreted and doesn’t significantly raise blood pressure. This weakens the argument that only those with high blood pressure and who can’t process extra sodium need to restrict sodium intake.
d
Every human being ███ █ █████████████ ████ ███ ██ █████ ████ ███████
The argument is about excess sodium intake, so this is irrelevant.
e
Any sodium not ████ ██ ███ ████ ████ ████████ █████ ████████ ██████ ██ ██ █████████
(E) tells us that if sodium is not used by the body and is not excreted, then it will increase blood pressure. This is consistent with the argument. For the vast majority of people, sodium that is not used is simply excreted.