Ex-Coronation Street and Bad Girls actress Debra Stephenson talks about her family life and homeopathy to mark Homeopathy Awareness Week.

DEBRA Stephenson’s busy career is built around her family life. Two years ago the 39-year-old actress, her husband, James Duffield, a builder, and their children, Max, eight, and Zoe, four, moved from London to a house near the beach at Poole, Dorset, for lifestyle and health reasons.

Both youngsters suffered as babies from a common condition, bronchiolitis, an inflammation which reduces the amount of air reaching the lungs making it difficult for children to breathe.

Stephenson’s daughter had a life-threatening attack when she was six weeks old.

So although leaving the capital has, she reveals, cost her the opportunity of a few roles, she has no regrets.

“I feel the air’s cleaner and fresher here and it’s better for the kids. I’ve got such a good work-life balance now. I can run along the beach to keep fit, which doesn’t feel like a chore.”

Struggles and fights involved in her role as foul-mouthed psychotic in Bad Girls often left her bruised and gave her first-hand experience of homeopathy, when an on-set nurse treated them with arnica.

“I was amazed at how effective it was at minimising the discolouration and it encouraged me to find out more about other remedies,” says Stephenson, who’s supporting Homeopathy Awareness Week, which runs until Tuesday.

“The remedies have been so helpful since I’ve had children. As they were prone to coughs and colds as babies, and Zoe was so frighteningly poorly at one time, I was anxious to help stop those problems developing and potentially leading to something worse,”

she says. “A homeopath prescribed them each constitutional remedies, given to treat the person rather than the symptoms.

Also, I use a specific remedy at the first sign of a sniffle and they are very healthy and seem able to shrug off minor ailments.”

“My view is that homeopathy is what you can do before you go to a doctor, not instead of going to a doctor, and it’s a way of being positive and pro-active about health.”

• Debra Stephenson is supporting Homeopathy Awareness Week to help increase understanding of the benefits of homeopathy and how it can be used alongside conventional medicine.

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