Question about backing up/restoring

Hi, I've been googling for almost two hours now and can't find the answer to what seems like a simple question: Is restoring an iPod from a backup any different than if the restore was never done?

My Touch has been acting up a little, it's hard to say if the cause is normal iOS 5 bugs or something else. Some posts say to restore to factory settings and then restore from the last backup -- but wouldn't this just copy whatever corruption existed back onto the iPod? How could anything be fixed if you're just copying all the backed-up data back into the iPod?