It may seem like common sense that you should keep kids away from cigarette smoke. But it’s easier said than done in a home where mom or dad is a smoker.

A new study finds that when asthmatic kids have less exposure to tobacco smoke, they have fewer flare-ups and spend less time in the emergency room.

That should give any parent a little extra motivation to kick the habit.

The study, published in the journal Chest, looked at 290 asthmatic kids with an average age of 11, and it found these kids benefit greatly when their exposure to smoke is reduced, even when it’s not eliminated altogether.

And that makes perfect sense. Tobacco smoke is an allergen for many people, including children. It can trigger asthma, so reducing your exposure to it will reduce the number of episodes.

The lesson here isn’t just to keep kids away from secondhand smoke – although you certainly should. The real lesson is that our environments are often filled with allergens, whether we recognize them as such or not.

Conditions such as asthma are triggered or made worse by exposure to these allergens. Less exposure means less asthma, as these kids have learned.

If you’re a smoker and there’s an asthmatic in your home, you might need to give up your habit – or at the very least start to smoke outside – if you want to see the condition improve.

If you’re an asthmatic, the important thing for you to understand is what triggers your episode. Sometimes, it’s not as obvious as a cloud of tobacco smoke in the living room.

Get yourself tested for allergens, but make sure your doctor does it right. Most will test only for the allergies that cause a rise in IgE antibodies, as opposed to both IgE and IgG antibodies.

Here at my practice, I’ve had tremendous success reducing and even eliminating asthma by simply giving my patients the more thorough tests they deserve.

You deserve the same, so make sure your doctor gives you all the tests you need. Once you identify your allergens, you can remove them – and breathe better.