Here’s kind of a no-brainer: A new study that’s going to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology shows that smoking further adds to the risk that people with nasal allergies have for developing asthma.

They’re billing this as a ground-breaking study, but to me, it just makes logical sense. After all, we already know that people who have allergic rhinitis (the medical term for nasal allergies) often develop asthma. And if you smoke or are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke, your risk for asthma is also greater. So doesn’t it make sense that combining those 2 risk factors would greatly increase your chances of having asthma?

Here are the study highlights:

• 325 rhinitis patients, aged between 18 and 40 years, who did not have asthma at the start of the study
• Participants were asked whether they smoked or not
• Participants were then monitored for 10 years and all those who developed asthma during this time were identified

The results of the study showed that patients who smoked were almost 3 times more likely to develop asthma during the course of the study as those who did not smoke. So your “takeaway” from this study – if you haven’t already figured it out – is that if you have allergies and you smoke, stop smoking. Or face the probability of adding asthma symptoms to your woes at some point down the line.