We all want smooth, soft, unblemished skin. But sometimes it seems like great skin is either something you’re born with or something you’ll never achieve. These days, the medical industry has created skin care treatments that are halfway between plastic surgery and serious cosmetics. You can have your skin sanded, chemically peeled, zapped with lasers, frozen or injected with Botox, the catchy hyphenated name for botulism toxin. You can spend thousands of dollars in a pretty short period of time to achieve results that may or may not be what you hoped for.But one of the most wonderful skin care treatments is easily available to everyone, has side benefits that affects not just your rosy glow but your whole body, and is utterly painless to use. It’s called water, and you drink it.

Not coffee. I know, coffee has water. It also has an abundance of interesting chemicals including caffeine, which raises your heartbeat, exaggerates stress on the body and causes diuresis, or loss of hydration. All these things combine to make for ravaged, hag-like skin, which if that’s what you’re aiming for, is just fine. But those of us who want to hold off hagdom as long as possible have to face the facts: that cappuccino may taste good, but it’s going to increase under eye circles, make your kidneys work harder than they should, and can result in breakouts, flushing and blotchy skin.

The facts are these. Not Pepsi, not beer, not juice, not even tea can replace the magical, rejuvenating effects of that old classic, H2O.