If you’ve never dealt with chronic migraines before, consider yourself lucky.

It’s often assumed by those who don’t deal with chronic migraines that a migraine is merely a more aggressive version of a headache. Frankly, I’m not even sure how that association started; headaches are certainly a symptom of migraines, but they sure as heck aren’t the whole deal.

If you have a full-on migraine, you can expect to deal with, in this order, fatigue, aches, impaired vision, pounding headaches, light sensitivity, nausea, and general lethargy, all stretched out over the course of several days. So yeah, not fun.

For those of you who do have to deal with migraines on a regular basis, I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that there is no cure for migraines, or at least not one that I’ve heard of. The good news is that there are lots of little practical things you can do to lessen a migraine’s effects and speed up your recovery.

First and foremost, drink water. Drink lots of water. Like, take the amount you usually drink, and multiply that by three. Hydration will keep your body processes chugging along. Keep that water with you while you rest in a dark, quiet room. The less stuff stimulating your senses, the better. If your symptoms aren’t too debilitating, try doing some light exercise like yoga to get your blood flowing and generate some calming hormones. And if the pain is really excruciating, there’s no shame in taking a painkiller, provided you take it alongside all of this other stuff.

It’s gonna be a really lousy few days, but with any luck, you’ll be back to your old self in short order.