30 Questions You Need To Ask Yourself Before You Die

I woke up this morning and my life clock marked 30. My first sleep-deprived idea was to pack a small suitcase, get on the first train, move to another country, change my name, change my hair color (or get plastic surgery if needed), and start from scratch. When I don’t know how to deal with life, I sometimes hide. Other times, I fight.

By now, I’m good at both fighting and disappearing. I’m old enough to be acquainted with life’s darkest and most elevated places, and young enough to take more. But there’s no merit to either, fighting or flying, if they don’t come as a result of one’s deepest truth. When fueled by fear both responses are cowardly, both are equally wrong.

So after I washed my face and considered the costs of running and those of fighting, I decided not to do either. I started contemplating a third alternative.

I decided to re-evaluate the meaning of life and knock on doors I don’t have a key for, to come up with 30 questions that we should all ask ourselves before we die. Many of us get to 30, 40, 50 or beyond spending our entire lives as strangers to ourselves.

1. How much have you loved? Count the people. When it comes to love, I’ve been so focused on the minuses, I have no idea how to answer this; and these minuses are all based on not-enoughness. So if you’re in the red too, let’s put the ball back in our court. How much have you loved? Have you loved even when it hurts, when you can’t, when you shouldn’t, when you wouldn’t, when you didn’t? If so, you’re richer than you feel.




2. What do you love doing that you aren’t doing? Furthermore, how could you get paid for doing what you love? Let’s brainstorm. It’s your right to be alive every second of the day. You’re not supposed to spend eight hours in chains and the remaining four getting high on mental and physical distraction to cope with the depression of not doing what you should, what you want, what you need to be doing.




3. What person or type of person would you choose as a life companion? A witness to your life? Forget the shoulds, the can’ts, the won’ts, the impossibles. Who would you love and who would love you back if you could have a say in it? Cause see, your say in this makes all the difference. When you say your dreams out loud, you turn on the engine. It’s like this whole life is waiting to come rushing out of you and in wishing it — out loud — you open the gates and give it permission to happen.




4. Where do you want to live? Are you happy with your life where you are? Could you be happier somewhere else? It’s true that you can be home wherever you are. But it’s also true that some places are more in tune with the kind of life that comes bursting out of you. There’s nothing more inspiring and motivating than good company and an environment that reflect and support your mission.




(MORE: Is Your Hometown a Place to Grow Old? Mine Is)

5. What do you want to accomplish? And most important, why — what’s your motivation? Be unrealistic. Life itself is unrealistic.

6. What do you want to be remembered by? Write it down. This is the man/woman who _______________. Take your time. 




7. What kind of life would make you jealous? And why? If you could start over, what would your life look like, right now? (Psst … Don’t let your doubts in on this yet – they’re gonna’ ruin everything.)




8. What adventures do you want to have? Can you list five? Adventures aren’t just for children — or maybe the 10-year-old in us never dies. And it’s that inner child that really loves and lives life for what it is: the greatest adventure in the universe.




9. If you had to add something to humanity, what would your contribution be? List at least one thing. The world doesn’t owe you. You owe the world. The good news is that whatever the answer to this question, you’ll enjoy doing it.

10. What are your ghosts? Your unspoken demons? The stuff you keep in your closet under a lock? What are you most deeply afraid of? Say it out loud. Get real with yourself. It’s how you conquer them.




11. What are your favorite memories? Can you picture four or five instances in your childhood you are fond of? What’s the common denominator that lies at the core of them? There is usually only one or two life-altering statements that come up when you dig. How can you transform your current experiences so they begin with that same idea?




12. Who do you love the most? What 10 people would you put on a lifeboat in case of a universal tsunami, asteroid or any other realistic end-of-the-world event? Make a list. You can have a million friends on Facebook, but at the end of the day, you’re lucky if you can find 10 people you would die for and who would die for you. Email them as soon as you can. Remind them that if the world ends tomorrow, they’d be on your lifeboat.
 


13. What worries you the most? Worry comes from fear. And most fear is imaginary. So what are you worried about?

14. What type of people inspire you and make you come alive? What people at this point in your life add to the truest equation of you? Reach out to them, get closer, “touch” them, spend time with them, be around them. Aliveness is the one virus you always need to catch.  




(MORE: How to Break Up With a Friend)

15. What type of people bring you down and make you hate yourself? Break up with them. Today. It’s not rejection, it’s just selection. You must not invest your love in people who don’t want it and who use it to deplete you. 
Love is the most elevated, beautiful transaction between two creatures. But it’s still a transaction. You are responsible for your heart’s investments.



16. Who are your mentors? What have they taught you? Can you make a list? If you know them personally, thank the writers, thinkers, teachers, people who’ve shown you the way. You owe them a mention on your lips and in your heart; and you must pay the inspiration forward. It’s contagious and fuels you.

17. What is your cosmic elevator pitch? Not your job description, professional bio, resume, About page. In short, who are you – raw, unedited, wild, ordinary and extraordinary you?

18. What issues can you help with? We’re in trouble as a planet, as a species, as a global community and as individuals. If you want to live here, you need to pay the toll of helping out. Don’t worry, others will help clean your mess, too. It’s how it goes with humans. They mirror each other, for better or worse.




19. How can you express yourself creatively? Starting with the belief that we are all creative animals by nature, what’s your medium? Art of any kind speaks directly to the heart. It doesn’t go through reason. You need to speak Art if you want to understand Heart. So pick a medium and start practicing.




20. How do you manage your time? What works for you? If you’re a mess, how can you get it together? Here are some creative tips on productivity. Can you make a schedule, write down your routine (to help you stick to it), come up with a productivity credo of some sort?




21. If you were to leave the world today, what is your manifesto? What would you tell your children if you were forced to abandon them unexpectedly? Tell them what you would want them to know about you now.

22. What makes you come alive? What ignites you? What makes you forget time, and space, and love, and food and water and even why – if taken to extreme? As Bukowski put it, “Find out what you love and let it kill you.” (Or resurrect you.)




23. What are your most painful memories? Are you still replaying them in your mind and using them as an excuse to fuel your fear of getting hurt again? Do you think they might be keeping you from trusting your heart again?

24.
 Why do you eat the way you eat and the things you eat? What do you think you should eat that you’re not eating – and why? What can you put in your body that gives you pleasure and also respects and nourishes it? If you don’t know, find out. You can’t honor life if you don’t eat what cultivates it.  




25. What ignites your brain? Can you add more of that to your everyday life? Get smarter? Train your brain? Evolve? Don’t waste your precious time on meaningless entertainment that numbs your mind and makes you smaller. 




26. What physical exercise makes you sweat like you mean it and enjoy both the process and the feeling afterward? If you’re not currently practicing it, can you read more about it, surround yourself with people who practice it, sign up for a class, do whatever will motivate you to take it on?

27. What does your body need in order to function at its best? Can you make a list of what makes you feel healthiest and function optimally and try to practice it every day? If you’re not sure, start experimenting.

28. What feeds your spirit? What gives you goosebumps? What makes you fall down to your knees in awe? Is it God? Religion? The universe? Science? Starry nights? Music? Art? Animals? Whatever it is, it should surpass your understanding — there is no awe without mystery.



(MORE: Why Boomers Need to Ride Roller Coasters)

29. What are you proud of so far? What have you accomplished? Don’t compare yourself to others. There will always be someone who’s done “more” and some who’s done “less.” But what can you, at this point in your life (your circumstances, your reality), give yourself a hug for? Do it.



30. 
Fast-forward to your epitaph. What does it say? As a place-holder, let’s paraphrase Jack Kerouac: “They lived and loved and asked, blessed and adventured … and they weren’t sorry.”


So, what is the meaning of life?

Being able to sit with it and realize that you’re rich because you have a universe inside you that you can reach at any given moment.

Your world is constantly being created through you and there is no meaning outside of you that won’t take your deepest, greatest truth in consideration. Skip love, money or fame if they don’t come as a result of your life-driving truth – they’re the roof to your inner house, and to add a roof you must first discover, understand and create that house. If you don’t know where to start building, just ask.

Why Nicotine Is So Addictive

When someone says a substance is addictive, they can mean two separate things.

Physically addictive, more accurately physically dependent, is when your body begins to depend on the presence of a particular substance for its physical well being. It’s begun compensating its normal processes to adjust for the new artificial normal.

The sudden absence of that substance won’t allow enough time for the body to compensate without the substance. The result will be withdrawal symptoms like nausea, vomiting, chest pains, head and body aches, seizures, uncontrolled body sweats, and shortness of breath.

Alcohol is a great example. If you don’t normally consume it, and then all of a sudden decide to drink like a college student on spring break, your body would be unable to compensate for the sudden influx of booze and you will get nauseated, most likely puke, could have seizures, become unconscious and potentially stop breathing.

The same thing happens when you decide to go on a two-year-long spring break bender and then suddenly stop. The body, once again, is unable to compensate for what it considers abnormal.
Substances that are considered to be addictive, yet do not cause the physical withdrawal symptoms when suddenly stopped, tend to be classified as being psychologically addictive, not physically dependent. Meaning the person might still crave the substance, like a stereotypical fat cop does doughnuts, but won’t have to deal with the physical withdrawals that go along with other substances.

Gambling, high risk behaviors like bungee jumping and skydiving, or anything considered psychologically addictive, and yet doesn’t cause physical dependence, tend to stimulate the reward centers of the brain and cause the person to crave whatever action will cause further stimulation. Just try and ring a bell around Pavlov’s dogs and see if they don’t go a little crazy for the reward to come.

Nicotine, like other substances such as heroin, and alcohol, has been shown to cause some level of physical dependence as well as causing the cravings associated with being psychologically addicted. To understand why, let’s talk about what affects nicotine has on the body.

Nicotine is a natural substance produced by a family of plants known as Solanaceae or Nightshade. Dried tobacco leaves contain between .6-3% nicotine. The drug acts on what are known as nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (NCR’s) and affects two main areas of the body- one called the adrenal medulla, and the other affects the central nervous system (CNS).

Inside of the CNS, nicotine binds to those NCR’s and causes the release of several “feel-good” neurotransmitters like dopamine.

Tobacco smoke also contains several substances known as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAO). MAO’s enzymes are responsible for breaking down “feel-good” neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. The result is more of these neurotransmitters circulating than would otherwise be. When you smoke tobacco, nicotine is able to begin acting on these receptors within about 7 seconds and has a half life of around 2 hours. This sudden reward pathway is one of the reasons some people think nicotine cravings are so intense.

Inside of your adrenal medulla (and several other areas of the body) by binding to NCR’s, nicotine will cause an increase in the amount of calcium that is infused into your cells. The result is a release of the hormone epinephrine (adrenaline). This will cause an increase in your blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood sugar levels. The stuff “adrenaline-junkie” dreams are made of!
One of the under-talked about problems with nicotine is it’s toxicity. NCR’s will increase the amount of neurotransmitter released in response to the amount of nicotine present. The more nicotine in your system, the more toxic the reaction. The average amount of absorbed nicotine in a cigarette is about 1mg. At those levels, all the feel good centers of the brain are working like a charm. The higher the dose, the more unwanted the reaction. Things like nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, headaches, muscle spasms will progress into seizures, low blood pressures, respiratory failure, and finally around 40-60 milligrams, it will kill you.

The physical and psychological addictive properties of nicotine revolve around your body compensating for these increases in neurotransmitters and hormones. When you stop taking in nicotine the body begins compensating by either increasing or decreasing their release. The end result is the body trying to continue adjusting for nicotine in your system. AKA, withdrawals.
Physical withdrawals with nicotine are considered to be much more mild than withdrawals from other drugs like heroin, alcohol, and methamphetamine’s. Depending on the length of time and amount of nicotine used, the symptoms will vary in intensity and length. They usually begin around 2-3 hours after the last nicotine ingestion and peak at around 2-3 days. The symptoms include anxiety, depression, trouble sleeping, drowsiness, headaches, increased appetite, problems concentrating and feelings of restlessness and frustration. Once the body is able to begin secreting the correct amount of neurotransmitters and hormones to deal with your nicotine-free existence, the remaining addiction tends to be psychological and revolves around cravings.

The psychologically mediated factors around nicotine addiction are thought to be more responsible than the physical factors in the difficulty in becoming nicotine-free. In several withdrawal symptom studies, participants quitting smoking continually listed cravings as the thing having the most negative affects when trying to quit. While most listed physical side effects as an issue, it was the cravings that had more of an impact on them relapsing. Curse you Pavlov! So the physical side effects in this case are typically gone within several days after one’s last nicotine ingestion, but cravings can sometimes last for years.
So, in the end, the higher the dose, the greater the chance of toxic side effects. The more you use it, the greater chance you have of getting cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. If you do get these diseases and you continue smoking, the greater chance you will have of dying from them. So, needless to say, if you’re a smoker, there are probably few things you can do for yourself that will benefit your long term well-being, and the happiness of those who love you, more than quitting smoking or using other tobacco products, as difficult as that stopping can be. If you happen to also be overweight and a smoker, then whew, you’ve got your work cutout for you. But in the end, fixing both of those problems, hopefully including a healthy dose of regular exercise and eating lots of veggies and fruit with the fix, will be well worth it for your quality and length of life, and will even save you a boatload of money with fewer medical bills and saving the cost of cigarettes and the like.

Penguin 2.0 (4) Upate: Newest Version Of Google Algorithem, How To Recover?

It's that time again. After a long series of mini updates for Penguin 1.0, the newest version, referred to by Matt Cutts as Penguin 2.0 will be implemented into Google's algorithm. The new update was just announced by Matt Cutts on May 22nd, so we don't know exactly what changed yet. However, based on what Cutts has said leading up to the update, as well as what we learned from Penguin 1.0, we can make some likely assumptions. Please note that what follows is solely my best guess at what Google has changed with Penguin 2.0, and how to recover. New data may be revealed as tests get underway that changes the SEO community's collective knowledge.

Ever since the first Penguin turned the SEO world on its head, any major changes are often met with anxiety and even dread by many webmasters. If your website has felt the backlash and there's been a noticeable drop in rankings, don't panic. Fortunately, there are several steps that can be taken to recover and get back on track.

The Basics

According to Matt Cutts, the new version of Penguin is primarily designed to penalize websites that utilize black hat SEO techniques and reward websites that offer genuine value. Webmasters who create content that people naturally want to share and websites that visitors want to explore and return to shouldn't be affected negatively. He also stated that Penguin 2.0 should help many small to mid-sized businesses that play by the rules and avoid black hat SEO. It should also help authority sites gain traction while decreasing the rankings of sites that merely provide generic fluff.

The ultimate goal is to cut back on link spamming and hacking, while providing webmasters with the tools to fix hacked sites. Since "cluster results," where a cluster of results from the same website have been somewhat of a problem, they have also addressed this issue. Consequently, search results should be more balanced where one particular site doesn't dominate the first page of a search term.

They are also targeting certain search queries that have a reputation for being affiliated with spam (for example, "payday loans"). Sites that go overboard with advertisements or try to sneak them in under the nose of visitors may also be penalized.

In reality, it doesn't appear that Google is reinventing the SEO wheel with Penguin 2.0, but simply tightening their algorithm to provide users with the most high-quality and relevant content possible. Of course, this isn't fool-proof and some legitimate webmasters may get caught in the crossfire.

Here are some factors to consider when building links in the new, Penguin 2.0 environment.

Link Value

Although it's helpful to have a large volume of links, it won't do much good if they're from "bad neighborhoods." That's why it's so important to focus on acquiring links from reputable sites. One great way to do this is via guest blogging. As long as the vast majority of links are from trusted sites, they should act as a shield that protects from future updates.

Otherwise, an abundance of links from bad neighborhoods that use manipulative techniques can have a negative impact. If you're unsure of a website's credibility, use as tool like PR Checker. This simple tool will quickly display a domain's page rank. Websites with a page rank of 4 or higher are generally suitable for backlinks, but the higher the better.

However, Page Rank isn't always fool-proof. It's best to look at the content on the website and evaluate how useful, relevant, and interesting it is. Also, check the website's social channels like Facebook and Twitter, and see how many followers they have in each. A higher follower count is generally a good indication of quality and credibility.

Link Velocity

Another issue that Google has addressed is the rate at which a site acquires links. Except for a few select cases with viral implications, they know that quality sites usually accumulate links organically and gradually over time. If a newer website suddenly experiences spikes where numerous links are acquired over night, this serves as a red flag to Google, making it more likely the site will get "sandboxed." Search Engine Watch demonstrated this phenomenon on a line graph where any more than 75 links a day were ignored by Google.

For this reason, it's best to be somewhat conservative in a link building campaign and not create huge quantities at one time. Instead, it's better to space them out over time in a more natural manner. Basically, the velocity should be consistent or increase slightly over time.

Avoid Exact-Match Anchor Text

After analyzing a ton of data, Google and most SEO professionals have recognized the correlation between exact match anchor text and web spam. Accordingly, they have taken measures to penalize sites that have excessive links with exact match keywords in the anchor text. Since this is likely to keep tightening in the future, it's smart to keep this practice to a minimum. If your site has an excessive amount of links with exact match keywords in anchor texts, it's a good idea to edit those keywords so that they are not exact matches.

Instead, use sentence fragments and branded anchors. I recently wrote an overview of all the different types of anchor text, along with an analysis of each one and recommendations for how to properly use anchor text in a Penguin 2.0 environment.

Link Relevancy

As most webmasters with basic SEO knowledge already know, relevancy plays a big role in link quality. Links from completely irrelevant sites can hurt a site's rankings (or, at best, provide negligible value), while links from highly relevant sites should help as long as they're reputable. If you've been accumulating links from a hodgepodge of sites that have nothing to do with your industry, this could account for a decrease in rankings from Penguin 2.0. Keep this in mind in future SEO campaigns.

Here are some ways to improve your rankings if you've been adversely affected by Penguin 2.0. 

Step 1. Understand Your Link Profile

One of the most effective ways to recover from Penguin 2.0 and protect yourself from future issues is to have a full understanding of your link profile. Start with a link profile audit to identify bad links which could have caused your website to get hit by Penguin 2.0. If you're the do-it-yourself type, try data tracking tools like Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer.

These platforms are designed to create an in-depth picture of your link profile. Some common features include backlink reports, inbound link analysis and daily rank tracking. While this wasn't all that necessary a short while ago, these tools are becoming more and more important. After understanding your link profile, you can take the necessary steps to solve any problem areas. 

Step 2. Run Backlink Checks on Sites Linking to You

In addition to checking the backlinks of your website, it's a good idea to investigate the primary sites that link back to you. This can also be done via Majestic SEO, but there are other tools like Backlink Watch and Analyze Backlinks that are also effective. This is important because if a particular site is getting links from bad neighborhoods, it will lower their link equity. In turn, this can have a negative impact on your SEO. If you find a site with poor link equity, backlinks from this site should be removed.

Step 3. Remove and Disavow Harmful Links

By all accounts, the consensus is that a website can recover and improve its ranking in time through the removal and/or disavowal of bad inbound links. Since Google's algorithm will eventually re-crawl and re-index content, a website can reclaim its position in the rankings, in most cases. While this process is usually frustrating and often time-consuming, it's necessary to get rankings back on track and climb the SEO ladder once again.

But the question is, how do you know which links to remove or disavow? You can either get assistance from a professional SEO firm to analyze your link profile and provide a spreadsheet of which links to remove, or you can try following this step-by-step guide.

Step 4. Build New, High-Quality Inbound Links

If you've been hit by Penguin 2.0, the best way to prove to Google that your website belongs in the rankings is by getting other credible, high-quality websites that Google trusts to vouch for you. You can do this by getting inbound links from these websites. There are lots of ways to ethically build high-quality, powerful links, but my favorite is through guest blogging. If guest blogging isn't an option, then here are 8 other ways to build links.

Conclusion

Penguin 2.0 is a tightening of the algorithm Google originally launched back in April of 2012. The principles are the same, as are the goals Google is trying to achieve with the release of the next iteration of it. If you've been hit by Penguin 2.0, follow the steps above to recover from it, and be sure to tread carefully as you move forward with your SEO initiative. Don't go for the short-term gain if it sacrifices your brand in the long-term. Otherwise, Penguin will be making a very unpleasant visit to your website.

Penguin 2.0(4) update: It's Time To Care About Your Website

On May 22^nd, Google finished rolling out the second generation of its Penguin updates. Looking back at the first release of the algorithm in April 2012, the focus was primarily around webspam. Since then, there have been only iterations; with the bases being more like “data refreshes” as seen in the most recent update in October 2012. Now with Google Penguin update 2.0, the update is specific to the search algorithm of Google – and this time the impact will only affect around 2.3% of English queries, a decrease in comparison to the first generation of webspam (3.1%).

The update not only affects the U.S. or English-speaking countries, but is fully rolled out globally for other languages as noted yesterday in Matt Cutts blog:

“The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.”

This is surprisingly early. Especially because Cutts, who is the Head of the Google webspam team announced another attack on link farms, Over-Optimization, “Black Hat” and keyword stuffing in a recent video scheduled to release over the coming summer. It seems that Penguin 2.0 will just be the beginning as made known in the video announcement:

“We’re relatively close to deploying the next generation of Penguin, [...] Internally we call it ‘Penguin 2.0’, …and again, Penguin is a webspam change that’s dedicated to try to find black hat webspam, and try to target and address that.”

It’s only been ten days since the announcement on May 13^th of what to expect in the coming months and they have already rolled out 2.0 – ending the life of several pages with bad links. Cutts has stressed that the impact of the second-generation webspam update will have a much deeper and greater influence this time around. 

“So this one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0, and we expect it to go a little bit deeper in have a little bit more of an impact.”

After the first update we did a deep dive analysis into the impact Penguin 1.0 had in a posting called “Bad SEO” Update. In a similar fashion, we have analyzed our data for an in-depth look at understanding the impact of Penguin 2.0.

Who are the top losers from the Penguin 2.0 update? Our analysis uncovered whose SEO Visibility was seriously impacted, with sites like cheapoair.com, dish.com and the salvationarmy.com:

Domain	Cluster	SEO Visibility Current	Diff	in %
2dplay.com	games	8781	-12610	-58,95
lifed.com	business	11783	-15678	-57,09
dressupjunior.com	games	7965	-8719	-52,26
reeds.com	business	4000	-2430	-37,79
dailydot.com	blog/community	13783	-8059	-36,90
dressupgamesite.com	games	30248	-17616	-36,80
movie2k.to	blog/community	53685	-28446	-34,63
ets.org	business /edu	28496	-14575	-33,84
psychicguild.com	business	32019	-16361	-33,82
tvrage.com	blog/community	40808	-20269	-33,19
concerthotels.com	blog/community	19503	-8715	-30,88
cheapoair.com	price comparison	59613	-23950	-28,66
salvationarmy.org	blog/community	5504	-2577	-31,89
myplayyard.com	games	39099	-14747	-27,39
dish.com	business	59561	-22172	-27,13
forlocations.com	blog/community	84020	-30646	-26,73
1channel.ch	business	48854	-16778	-25,56
kporno.com	porn	77194	-56086	-42,08
4tube.com	porn	56000	-36604	-39,53
extremetube.com	porn	28222	-15850	-35,96
bangyoulater.com	porn	24547	-13147	-34,88
pornhub.com	porn	379467	-180123	-32,19
largeporntube.com	porn	73911	-28036	-27,50
xhamster.com	porn	248177	-92927	-27,24
tube8.com	porn	233411	-77958	-25,04

Conclusion

It’s not the update I was expecting. I thought that this Googles Penguin update would have had a bigger impact similar to Panda 1. But that didn’t happen. My first analysis shows that many thin sites, sites with thin links and especially untrusted links face the problem. In addition, some small business sites were hit because they haven’t taken SEO serious enough. Google itself confirmed that the impact wouldn’t be as high as many thought – maybe this is just the calm before the storm and the big update is really coming in the future. We will see. I will continue to keep you updated with our results.

If you’re interested in seeing if you were hit? Check your domain using our Searchmetrics Essentials Research Tool!

Angelina Jolie's Successful Operation and She Came Back

Angelina Jolie was back at work preparing for her next film just four days after having a double mastectomy, her doctor has revealed in a detailed description of the actor's months of treatment.

The Oscar-winner underwent her double mastectomy on 16 February at the Pink Lotus Breast Centre in Beverly Hills, California, as the second of three operations to reduce her risk of breast cancer from 87% to 5%.

"On day four after her mastectomies I was pleased to find her not only in good spirits with bountiful energy, but with two walls in her house covered with freshly assembled storyboards for the next project she is directing.

"All the while she spoke, six drains dangled from her chest, three on each side, fastened to an elastic belt around her waist," wrote Dr Kristi Funk in a lengthy and intimate blogpost on the centre's website that explained what Jolie underwent before, during and after her three surgeries.

Despite her fame and constant trailing by the media, Jolie's medical treatment had remained a secret until Tuesday, when she wrote about her decision in an article in the New York Times.

She earned praise from breast cancer experts for flagging up the heightened genetic predisposition to the disease run by women who have inherited a faulty version of either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene from one of their parents.

Jolie approved Funk's account of her treatment to help women at high risk because of their family history of either breast or ovarian cancer to understand what is involved if they opt to undergo surgery rather than regular scans and preventive drugs as a way of managing their risk.

Jolie's first operation, on 2 February, was a "nipple delay", a procedure to rule out the presence of cancerous cells in the milk ducts around the nipple in women who have decided to preserve their nipples while almost all their breast tissue is removed during the mastectomy.

"Her partner [Brad Pitt] was on hand to greet her as soon as she came around from the anaesthetic, as he was during each of the operations," said Funk.

Tests showed no sign of cancer.

During the mastectomy a fortnight later, a plastic surgeon called Dr Jay Orringer also "performed the first stage breast reconstruction by placing tissue expanders with allograft", which Funk describes as "synthetic sheets of material, that create a more natural look" for women having their breasts rebuilt.

Despite an extra operation being involved to fit the tissue expanders, Jolie chose to have them, because they help maximise blood flow to the breast skin and nipple, said Funk.

Ten weeks later, on 27 April, Jolie received breast implants during her third and final surgery, the reconstruction, "which went extremely well, bringing an end to her surgical journey".

Funk also detailed the myriad medications and supplements which Jolie took to help her wounds heal after each operation, reduce the risk of infection, lessen post-operative nausea, vomiting, swelling and bruising, get the anaesthetics out of her system, increase the amount of oxygen reaching her skin and minimise scarring.

Angelina Jolie's Doctor Blogs About Her Double Mastectomy

It was Angelina Jolie's medical choice to undergo a double mastectomy given her family history of breast and ovarian cancer.

And, as she promised, the actress has now given her doctor the green light to share some background regarding her medical treatment to help women be aware of their options should they carry the BRCA gene mutation.

In a blog post on the Pink Lotus Breast Center website, Dr. Kristi Funk outlined the five stages of Angelina's surgical journey and how she made the right medical decisions for herself.

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Stage 1: Patients carrying the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations have up to an 87 percent lifetime chance of developing breast or a 54 percent chance of ovarian cancer. In Jolie's case, given her mother and grandmother both passed away from ovarian cancer (her mother had breast cancer as well), she underwent genetic testing to determine if she had the faulty gene.

Stage 2: According to Funk, this stage involves regular monitoring of the breasts every three months, which includes Mammograms, a clinical breast exam, a Breast MRI, along with self breast examinations.

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Stage 3: Having been diagnosed with a BRCA mutation, the Oscar winner had to decide whether to commit to having the mastectomy. That included discussing with her doctor her family situation and whether she planned to have kids (in Angie's case, the latter was moot since she's already got six).

Stage 4: This stage saw Jolie make some crucial decisions, like whether or not to preserve her nipples and, if so, whether to perform a painful "nipple delay" procedure. They also had to determine where the incision would be placed, and what kind of reconstruction will be done (implants versus flaps, for example). In Jolie's case, Funk said her body was "best suited" to implants with allograft, which are "synthetic sheets of material that create a more natural look." The thesp also went with tissue expanders, which required an additional operation but which maximizes blood flow to the breast skin and, per the physician, "allow us to optimize the final implant size, location and appearance."

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Stage 5: Jolie underwent the first procedure, the nipple delay, on Feb. 2, and aside from some slightly bruised skin, she returned to her regular activities. On Feb. 16, Jolie had the double mastectomy, which went smoothly and saw the first stage of breast reconstruction performed with the placement of tissue expanders with allograft.

Funk notes that "recovery reflects expectation" and that Jolie was not only "in good spirits with bountiful energy" but was already hard at work going over storyboards for her next directing project, just four days after the operation. After being given injections of saline into her expanders, the final reconstruction surgery occurred on April 27.