Some directions on medicines and home health care products are intended to protect the health of the manufacturer, not the health of the consumer.  For example: the caution on the side of the Q-Tips box that says, "Do not insert into ear."  Come on.  Are you telling me they created that long probe-like implement so I can clean my earlobes?  Sure, they don't want people poking out their eardrums, but if consumers actually started following those instructions, Q-Tips' market would collapse.  It's cynical; they depend upon people inserting Q-Tips into their ears, but they don't want to bear responsibility for the occasional jackass who works it in there with a pair of pliers.

I have a prescription for allergy medicine, a nose spray called Flonase.  When the allergist "trained" me on how to use it, he told me to schpritz it in there, then lean forward so it drips into the front of my nasal passages, then lay back in a chair so it drips into the back nasal passages.  The next time I visited him, he told me that "they've learned better now," and the "lean forward" step had been eliminated.  When I followed these new directions, I could feel that it wasn't working as well - the front of my head felt stuffier.  Then I said to myself, "I'll bet these new directions have nothing to do with efficacy.  I'll bet they've found that some people are so feeble that, when you ask them to lean forward, they black out, fall down, crack their skulls and sue you.  So they changed the instructions to protect themselves."  I have absolutely no proof of this, just the evidence of my own experience.  So I've disregarded the doctor and done it the old way.