has revealed she believes that 'stress' is what led to her developing tumours on her jaw.
The presenter, 44, had an operation in December 2024 to have them removed, with doctors telling her they were benign.
Reflecting on her health during an appearance on Jamie Laing's podcast on Wednesday, Fearne discussed why she believes the tumours grew.
She said: 'I think Dr Rangan Chatterjee's got stats in one of his books about sort of 95% of physical ailments are caused by stress.
'I'd had this little lump on my face for maybe two years. And I used to sort of sit there and fiddle with it when I was like reading to the kids at night.
'I had this scan. The woman very very casually kind of went, 'Yep, you've got um a tumour on your uh parotid gland, which is your saliva gland.'
Fearne Cotton has revealed she believes that 'stress' is what led to her developing tumours on her jaw
'And I was like, 'What? Weird. This feels like a bit of a wake-up call'.
Fearne was told the tumours were non-cancerous but she still took it as a sign that things 'had to change'.
She added: 'It was quite immediate that I thought that this feels like a bit of a wakeup call. And then luckily, I had a biopsy on it and it was benign.
'So, it was just a case of removing it. But I knew I had to sort of change things and not get to that point of absolute burnout, constantly.'
Earlier this month, Fearne appeared on This Morning where host Ben Shephard fought back tears as she discussed what drove her to write her new book.
The TV presenter admitted that he found it 'hard' to read his old friend's book, Likeable: How I Broke Free From The Need To Please, which details how Fearne, 44, came to terms with 'people pleasing'.
Sitting down with Ben, 51, and co-star on March 12, Fearne opened up on the therapy session that prompted her to get writing again.
Ben got emotional as he told Fearne, who previously wrote Happy Place, that he took the book with him to the pub to read and found it difficult to hear some of what she was opening up on, given their close relationship.
The presenter, 44, had an operation in December 2024 to have them removed, with doctors telling her they were benign
Ben told her: 'I texted you on Friday because we got given a copy of your book and I sat on my own and I read it, in a pub.
'I couldn't stop reading it. It's an extraordinary sort of testament to what you've done, what you've lived through, what you've experienced... so honest.'
'I'm going to cry,' Ben added, as he reflected on reading the book and recalled attending one of Fearne's Happy Place Festivals, a two-day event organised by the presenter in London.
Ben continued: 'I was reading the book on Friday, it was really hard for me to read because you are so creative and so brilliant at what you do.
'Your experience was so hard for me to think that you've gone through it and you sharing that is so important for us.'
Discussing why she wrote Likeable, Fearne went on: 'I had this massive wake up call where I was in therapy...
'My therapist said to me, I was waffling on about whatever, and I was censoring myself a bit, putting lots of excuses in the mix - she stopped me in my tracks and just said, "I'm going to ask you a question. How important is it that I like you?"
'I cried, and I thought, "Why on earth am I crying? What is that reaction about?"
'That was a bit of a wake up call for me to think this has maybe gone a bit too far that I'm trying to win my therapist over!'
Ben questioned: 'You did it for a long time and it had a really detrimental effect on you physically and emotionally?' to which Fearne continued: 'I think so.
After he was arrested in 2012, Watkins was convicted and sentenced in 2013, during which time that Fearne was hosting BBC Radio 1's weekday mid-morning show.
In quotes obtained by The Mirror, Fearne writes that she battled with intense 'shame' and feeling sick, which made it increasingly challenging to keep broadcasting.
She penned: 'I feel simultaneously glared at, stared at, yet utterly ignored by those in the office. Are they all talking about me behind my back? Or am I a narcissist for thinking that?'
Trying to push through, she explained that she 'shoved down the anger, the rage, the sorrow and tears' in order to keep going, but that it was a time of 'depression and a heaviness'.
However, she said that she no longer bears the weight of that shame after working through it in therapy and coming to the realisation that it was not hers to carry, but 'belongs to others' - mostly men.
The mother-of-two clarified: 'Men who have shamed me, treated me badly and left me lumbered with it.'
