A three-wave longitudinal study on the relation between commuting strain and somatic symptoms in university students: exploring the role of learning-family conflicts.

We demonstrated that learning-family conflicts explain why commuting may have unfavorable effects on health for medical students. We also showed that it is the long-term commuting experience that is related to health complaints and not the single commuting event. This means that short-term deviations from general levels of commuting strain do not cause somatic symptoms, but general high levels of commuting strain do instead.