Your body needs calcium from head to toe. But there are times when your body can have so much calcium that it’s not good for you. A condition called hyperparathyroidism can cause such a situation to happen, where your levels of calcium in your blood and tissues are too high.
In your neck, there are four similar glands -- each about the size of a grain of rice -- called parathyroid glands. They make a hormone that helps keep your amount of calcium at just the right level. But when even one of those glands makes too much of the hormone, the result is hyperparathyroidism.