I should have been somewhat more precise with my wording. The document is generally irrelevant for the purposes of deciding whether or not your product potentially infringes the patent. It's not until after processing the claims, or perhaps during if you're unclear about terminology or meaning, that you start considering the rest of the document.
INAL but this is incorrect. The rest of the document is mostly the disclosure and - critically - claims cannot rely on anything not disclosed.
Importantly during the review process you can edit or amend your claims, but you can't update the disclosure without changing precedent date.