The only perk I can see is that I don't tend to dry out as severly in the winters anymore (my hands used to crack and bleed from dryness by November, but they haven't done it since I started hydrating).
I'm actually the opposite. I used to drink one 20oz soda a day, and rarely dried out. I've decided to cut out most of the soda (mostly because of caffeine and sugar), and I've been drinking 1 bottle of water with a kool-aid drop-in at work. I've noticed the back of my hand has been drying out a lot more, to the point where I'm using a lot of lotion once or twice a month.
