Pain and stiffness in back of neck when chewing/eating certain foods?

[Botanist]

Hello! This is my first post. I have a lot of the signs of EDS hypermobility type and have been dx’d as hypermobile (awaiting my appointment with the geneticist who specializes in EDS, not till next spring unless someone else cancels :/ ), was previously dx’d as having fibromyalgia and currently have a lose and uncertain handle on my most bothersome symptoms between meds, diet and exercise (more like purposeful stretching but what can you do).

I imagine this is a weird question even for a website full of other unique and “rare” peeps; when I am eating certain foods, a chocolate candy bar being the most common but also things that are “sticky” like a large scoop of peanut butter, I get a stiffness and pain in the back of my neck from the base of my skull to the bottom of my neck (basically C3 right down to C7). No one has been able to tell me what it’s from and everyone looks at me like I’m crazy when I ask about it.

For reference, I have a lot of temporomandibular problems and headaches that feel like they start in my neck and shoot up into my skull, I’m hypermobile in a lot of my small joints and my shoulders and hips, I have cervical spinal stenosis, slightly upper scoliosis, and lumbar herniations. I won’t go into the other random symptoms that aren’t musculoskeletal as they aren’t relevant. Just want to know if anyone else has experienced something like this… Hopefully…

[Dr. Diana]

Hi Botanist — and welcome! I wonder if you’ve ever had a neck MRI done in flexion and extension? I wonder if your answer is positional and chewing such food alters your position a bit? We can all be fairly sensitive to neck/head/mouth position…

[Author]

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