Put the article (or articles) of clothing you would like to stretch into a washing machine. Fill the washing machine up with cold water. Do not use detergent or other additives. When the washer fills up and begins to wash, turn the washer off. Leave your clothes to soak for a minimum of 24 hours.
Likewise, certain diseases are present in a set population of people or geographic region of the world with just as much consistency. When a disease is present in a population or geographic region at consistent levels and periods of time, we term this an endemic disease. For example, the disease malaria is endemic to tropical areas of the world, such as those in South America or Africa. Malaria, however, is not endemic to Antarctica since it's not present there. The flu is endemic to a Chicago winter but not summer. And so on.
Examples of endemic diseases include chicken pox that occurs at a predictable rate among young school children in the United States and malaria in some areas of Africa. The disease is present in a community at all times but in relatively low frequency. By contrast, there are the related terms epidemic and pandemic: 1  An epidemic is a sudden severe outbreak within a region or a group, as with AIDS in Africa or AIDS in intravenous drug users.  A pandemic occurs when an epidemic becomes very widespread and affects a whole region, a continent, or the entire world.