Wabmester,
You said:
BTW, I read an interesting theory recently on why so many people die in their sleep: sleep apnea. Seriously. Estimates are that something like 25% of males suffer from sleep apnea without knowing it. Low O2 saturation causes the body to go into a wild ride at night (sort of a mammalian dive reflex). Anyway, lots of cardiac arrhythmias associated with the reflexes involved in how the body deals with the apnea events, and eventually one of them kills you.
I have sleep apnea. What you say is correct but it also affects many more things than just your heart. Daytime sleepiness, drowsyness, lack of attention, car accidents, work related issue due to inability to concentrate, blood chemistry issues, high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol and many others.
What happens is that the back of the throat closes off or the back of the tongue slides back when you are asleep and blockes your airway. This causes the brain to say "Wake UP!!!!!!" so you wake up enough to start breathing again. With sleep apnea, this can happen hundreds of times a night. This constant waking up routine prevents your body from getting the rest it needs to repair and the brain freaks out because you don't get into Stage 2 or Stage 3 sleep; the only levels that restore your health and allow the brain to chill for a while.
Blood chemistry goes to @ell, and cortisol levels increase (stress hormone). Blood oxygen levels go below 90% saturation and your sells starve for oxygen. The end result of all this is heart disease caused by scaring of your arteries from the cortisol and the depositing of cholesterol in the scars leading to blockages and heart attacks and strokes.
Sorry about the detail here but I believe it to be a relatively unknown and overlooked condition. If you SO says you stop breathing for more than a few seconds several times a night you need to get checked out. This could shorten your life. There are some treatments for it including CPAP machines, surgery, losing weight and other stuff. The biggest thing is to know if you have it and do something about it. My brother and I both use a CPAP machine and we have both beat the odds so far of having our first heart attack in our 40's like the other men in our family. With luck, we may delay it until much later in life. Genetics plays a major part but so does lifestyle and we are both pretty careful.
I still want to so at 95 by geing shot by a jealous husband. 8)
and ex-lover 
shoots you 4 times to make sure you're really definitely dead 
...get your name in the paper.. . also nice to be surrounded by loved ones when you go...very romantic too. 
