Perrie Edwards made X Factor history as part of Little Mix – the first girl group to win the talent show back in 2011.
Since then, she has become a household name. The musician, who is currently pregnant with her second child, sat down with the BBC to discuss her time in Little Mix for BBC Two documentary Girlbands Forever, which will begin airing on Saturday (November 1).
But away from the pop group, she’s had her fair share of health challenges, from mental health issues to a rare childhood condition.
Over the years, she has slowly shared more about her complicated health journey, and as we prepare to welcome her back to our screens, here’s the full breakdown.
Perrie Edwards has had no sense of smell since birth
Something fans might not know is that Perrie has been diagnosed with congenital anosmia, which is essentially a lack of sense of smell since birth. It’s a rare condition, with the Mirror reporting that it only affects 1 in 10,000 people.
The story of how she discovered she had the condition is pretty dramatic. While her family’s kitchen caught on fire, Perrie was blissfully unaware. “I couldn’t smell it,” she told the Mirror. “Our kitchen had set on fire. I saw the black smoke come under the door. And then I started coughing because it takes your breath away.”
Fortunately, there was no lasting damage. But the incident spurred her mum to have her tested, which then led to a young Perrie having surgery to try and restore her sense of smell. And it worked — for a while.
“I had surgery, came out, had big tampons in my nose, recovered for a while,” she continued. “And then I swear to God I could smell coffee. I woke up and smelled the coffee.”
Sadly, it wasn’t long before Perrie was left without a sense of smell once again. Despite this, she decided not to move forward with any further surgeries. “I was like, I’m not going through that again. I don’t care. If I had it and lost it, fair enough. But I’ve never had it, so why care?”
She has a rare oesophagus condition, which wasn’t diagnosed for seven years
Growing up, Perrie also had to contend with esophageal atresia. According to Great Ormond Street Hospital, this means that the top of the oesophagus isn’t formed properly, and in turn isn’t properly connected to the stomach. This means that food cannot properly pass from the throat to the stomach. So, up until the age of seven, Perrie says she spent a lot of time “projectile vomiting” because she couldn’t keep food down.
“I was severely undernourished,” she said during the We Need To Talk podcast. “I couldn’t eat a thing.”
“Every time my mum would feed me milk or whatever, I would just projectile vomit the milk back out. And my mum was like: ‘Something’s obviously not right. This isn’t normal.'”
However, doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with her. It got to a point that all the food she ate had to be blended first, and by the age of seven, she was “severely undernourished”.
Her mother persevered, going to “doctor after doctor” until they got to the bottom of it.
“The doctors were like: ‘If you didn’t persevere with your daughter, this would have been it,'” she recounted. “I had nothing left to give. I was just skin and bone; it was wild.”
To treat this condition, she had multiple surgeries. She was left with a scar on her stomach, which she has candidly shared in social media snaps since.
The condition ‘triggered’ her agoraphobia
“I’m starting to learn that maybe, growing up in a body that didn’t necessarily work made me feel quite trapped,” she added on the podcast, explaining that she was in hospital a lot for surgeries.
“I think that kind of is why I maybe suffer now with the feeling of being trapped and all this anxiety stuff.”
Her agoraphobia got so bad in 2024, she had periods where she didn’t leave her home.
“It got really bad. I couldn’t leave the house in September,” she said. “And it was so intense, and I remember thinking, this is not what I want for my life. From my experience, I feel very … uneasy when I leave the house,” she added. “And for me it was the case like, I didn’t want to go too far from home because it was too hard to get back.
“So home was my safe space,” she explained. “And I kind of told myself, in my house where I’m safe nothing can get me. Nobody’s out to attack me. I’m not gonna have the panic attacks. I’m safe here.”
Slowly but surely, with the help of her therapist, Perrie was able to overcome this. She started going to the shop for a few minutes, and went up to longer periods away from the house. Ultimately, she was even able to leave the country.
“All these things that were impossible [are now possible],” she concluded. “I just couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Perrie Edwards has been open about her anxiety
Perrie also disclosed that she has anxiety. It got so bad while she was in Little Mix, she wasn’t able to eat.
“Even when Little Mix became quite successful and we were touring the world and we were in hotel rooms and I’d be starving, could chew off my own leg, but I’d be too scared to ring,” she told the Mental As Anyone podcast.
Moreover, in a 2019 Instagram post, Perrie shared how she has “suffered really badly with anxiety and panic attacks”.
“When I first started to feel the effects of anxiety I thought I was losing my mind and it terrified me,” she wrote.”I felt so alone and like I was the first person in the world to ever experience it.”
She continued: “I’ve had a relationship with my mind for 25 years now, so to feel it working against me sometimes makes me feel like a prisoner in my own head.”
She says that upon realising she wasn’t the only one dealing with this, recovery came easier to her.
“I control of my life and accepted what I couldn’t control,” she concluded. She added that she didn’t want to “hide” anymore.
“I suffer from anxiety and I want you to all know if you suffer from anxiety you’re not alone.”
Girlbands Forever is on BBC Two Saturday (November 1) from 9.20pm.
Read more: Emotional Perrie Edwards reveals ‘the worst part’ of losing her baby at 24 weeks pregnant
You can catch the first episode of Girlbands Forever on BBC Two and iPlayer at 9.20pm on Saturday November 1.
Head to our Facebook page @EntertainmentDailyFix and let us know what you thought of this story. We want to hear your thoughts!