Heart attack risk factors: age, gender, family history, smoker, Diabetes Mellitus, elevated LDL - the bad cholesterol, hypertension.
The role of HDL, good cholesterol, is somewhat controversial but this much is clear. If your HDL is naturally high your chances of having a heart attack are less than someone who has low HDL. Unfortunately artificially increasing your HDL does not appear to be of any use.
If you want to calculate your risk of having a heart attack follow this link from the NIH and fill in the values. I did. My chance are 5% of having a heart attack in the next ten years...so I'm off to the gym. Five percent is too high for comfort.
