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I have found that there are two distinct causes of my canker sores. When I
eat any food made with wheat, rye or barley (and maybe oats) I get canker
sores on the lips. So, I stopped eating those foods, and haven't had a sore
on the lips since, except when I ate some food containing those grains. The
more careful I am, to read labels and ask questions, the less often I eat food
with those grains.

Even so, I still get canker sores fairly often inside the cheeks, along the
"bite line" where the teeth meet. I have thought that cheek biting might be
the cause of these sores. That is, I'd bite the cheek, make a small wound,
and that would become a canker sore for some reason.

Still, it seems odd that other persons in my family also bite their cheeks but
never get canker sores. What is different about me (besides being gluten-
intolerant)?

Recently I got interested in the inside of my cheeks and did some cheek-
gazing with the aid of a small bright flashlight and a mirror. Eventually with
an amount of pushing and pulling, I noticed that there are small white to
yellow "granules" scattered around inside the cheeks. There are some near
the roots of the back molars, and these seem to be scattered, with no order.

There are others that seem to lie opposite the bite line and appear to me to
be more organized, and are in a band that starts somewhere toward the rear
or middle of the cheek and go up to the corner of the mouth.

I began surfing the Internet looking for references to these granules, and
found some photographs that describe something called "Fordyce's
granules" and I think they resemble what I see in my mouth.

http://www.forsyth.org/oralpathology/case_053_answer.htm

They are identified as sebaceous glands (oil glands) that occur inside the
mouth, but don't have a hair like other glands do. Here is one definition:
"Fordyce's condition is tiny yellowish papules on the lips, buccal mucosa, or
gingivae. Each lesion represents an ectopic sebaceous gland."

http://www.utmb.edu/oto/Grnds.dir/derm.htm

I have found over the years (I am approaching 60) that eating chocolate will
sometimes cause me to get a small outbreak of what is like acne on the
face and maybe on the chest. It is as though some pores get blocked and
develop into a sore spot which can become a pimple.

What if the chocolate has the same effect on sebaceous glands inside the
mouth along the cheek? Could these Fordyce granules be reacting to
chocolate and becoming in-mouth acne? I had never before thought of a
canker sore as being the equivalent of a spot of acne but one located on the
mucous membrane of the mouth and not on the surface of the skin.  How
would such a spot feel?  Like a canker sore?

As of today, I am going to start another food diary and see when I get
canker sores on the cheeks and whether they are related to chocolate (or
other foods like oily nuts and oily popcorn which are often blamed for
causing acne and canker sores).