Lola,

I hope this will be helpful.

I experience sweating when eating in the area of my chin where I had my neck dissection. It is called "Gustatory Sweating" and resulted from damage to the nerve going to the parotid gland which causes saliva production when food is in the mouth. When this first happened I thought I was crazy, but did some research. Although I am a dentist, I had never come across this during my professional career and was quite surpeised to find out what it was.

My understanding is that when the nerves regenerate, they innervate the sweat glands instead of the parotid gland and the stimulus of the food causes the sweating.

I Googled the term just now and this is a quote from what I found:

[quote]Gustatory sweating: Sweating on the forehead, face, scalp, and neck occurring soon after ingesting food. Some gustatory sweating is normal after eating hot, spicy foods. Otherwise, gustatory sweating is most commonly a result of damage to a nerve that goes to the parotid gland, the large salivary gland in the cheek. In this setting, referred to as Frey syndrome, the sweating is usually on one side of the head. Gustatory sweating is also a rare complication of diabetes mellitus. In this case sweating may occur on both sides of the head, with mild or substantial severity. [/quote]

So what I'm thinking MIGHT be occuring with you is a simlar situation resulting from damage from the radiation to your parotid or some other nerve that is causing this.

You should of course check with your doctor and I would be interested in hearing what they have to say.

Hope this was helpful.

Jerry